Drama

Crime

Dark Woods (Das Geheimnis des Totenwaldes) 2020

“Dark Woods” is a German police procedural that is less about tracking down a serial killer than about the ripple effects of random, senseless violence and the pain of not-knowing what’s happened to a loved one who simply vanishes. There’s mystery in this account of a 30 year-long German case that only dogged persistence by […]

Series Review: German cops hunt a serial killer, and a kidnap victim, in the “Dark Forest (Das Geheimnis des Totenwaldes)”

Drama

Movie Review: Divorce, as personal as it gets — “The Killing of Two Lovers”

“The Killing of Two Lovers” is a break-up story as stark as its Utah-in-winter setting, as brutal as its title. The debut feature of writer-director Robert Machoian throws us into the seemingly quiet aftermath of a split, the calm after what appears to have been a just-as-calm “we need to work through some things” parting. […]

Movie Review: Divorce, as personal as it gets — “The Killing of Two Lovers”

Action

Movie Review: Danish, Dark, Bloody and…Sweet? “Riders of Justice”

Imagine the nerds from “The Big Bang Theory” stumbling into the plot of “Taken,” or pretty much any Liam Neeson out-for-revenge thriller. Now imagine them Danish. That’s “Riders of Justice,” the dark, bloody, sweet and sometimes hilarious comic thriller from Anders Thomas Jensen. He scripted the Oscar-winning “In a Better World,” which had similar messaging […]

Movie Review: Danish, Dark, Bloody and…Sweet? “Riders of Justice”

Biography

Movie Review: Walken vs Monsanto, “Percy vs. Goliath”

Truth be told, Christopher Walken has always worn his pants grandpa-high, his hats a little out-of-date. And he’s always grown a mean goatee, even in his silvery “legend of the cinema” years. So it’s no stretch thinking of him as a grandfatherly Saskatchewan canola farmer getting his back up when pushed around by Big Ag […]

Movie Review: Walken vs Monsanto, “Percy vs. Goliath”

Biography

The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

The struggle against the government. So as you can probably guess, this is about Billie Holiday (Andra Day). The feds don’t like her singing her song “Strange Fruit” since it’s about lynching. You can’t arrest someone for singing a song, so they try to bring her down for drug addiction. This is her story. Now, […]

Silencing a Song – The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

Comedy

Movie Review: A Polish teen in Ireland, “I Never Cry”

The phrase “sullen teen” doesn’t know borders and has symptoms one can recognize anywhere on Earth. The frown is there just to break up the monotony of the omnipresent scowl. “Please” and “thank you” are the hardest words in any language to master. Smoking? Sure. But only if it infuriates adults. And even those who […]

Movie Review: A Polish teen in Ireland, “I Never Cry”

Action

REVIEW: “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”

Just so you know where I’m coming from, Captain America has always been my favorite Marvel superhero and not just during his run in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Long before Marvel Studios started raking in billions of dollars at the box office, I was enthusiastically following Captain America’s comic book adventures, both as the head […]

REVIEW: “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”

Drama

First Glance: “Oxygen”

An exciting first trailer as dropped for the upcoming Netflix survival thriller “Oxygen”. It comes from director Alexandre Aja whose last movie was the surprisingly entertaining “Crawl”. You know, the one about a father and daughter trapped inside their flooded home by killer alligators during a Category 5 hurricane. On paper it sounded ludicrous. But […]

First Glance: “Oxygen”

Drama

Red Moon Tide

Avast, landlubbers, today’s movie selection deals with the rarely-seen topic of sea monsters! But before you lay out your harpoons and start double-tracking the vocals on your sea-shanties, this is a Spanish art-film about sea-monsters on the Mubi channel, so don’t expect 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea shenanigans. Lois Patiño’s film feels like what would […]

Red Moon Tide