Young love is tested by illness and honesty issues in “Caught by a Wave,” a scenic Italian romance set against a sailing backdrop. The leads are pretty and the locales romantic, but the scenario is generic and the pacing funereal in this dry-eyed weeper of rehab and regattas. Sailing camp on the isle of Favignana […]
Netflixable? Teen Italians, in love and facing tragedy — “Caught by a Wave”
THE DEVIL READS SALINGER The literary world is filled with plenty of famous authors that have gone on to cultivate a mass following with their works; becoming classic within their own right and touching the lives of many individuals and many generations around the world. Of course, the inane quirks and obscure facts are […]
A husband’s violent reaction becomes the talk of the neighborhood when he catches his cheating wife in the act. I noticed this film was on Prime and decided to watch it. Also the premise sounded interesting. This film marked the film debut of Beulah Bondi. This film is a bit of a curio as although […]
“Better Days” is a searing indictment of bullying culture and China’s insanely intense college admissions system, all tucked into a sadly compelling romantic thriller. The added-attention of an Oscar nomination gives a welcome boost to a movie much of the world missed in late 2019, but one well worth enduring and embracing. “Enduring” because Derek […]
Movie Review: Bullying as a romantic thriller — China’s Oscar contender “Better Days”
Destiny is a funny thing. When things go from bad to worse, fate plays a trick to change everything in an unthinkable way, to make things happen for the right people at the right time. Emma (Clarisse Albrecht), an Afropean woman, got herself into legal trouble when she was caught transporting drugs in the airport […]
Accidents happen on the road. Whether it’s the result of a crash, fight, or just a dead car battery. But what can we do to come out of such a situation? Do we just call for help or try to be proactive and fix the situation by ourselves? It’s hot weather conditions and Safa (Safa […]
SXSW 2021: “Are You Still There?”
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. In a very strict culture, two people who love each other must get married first before they are allowed to get close to each other. If intimacy occurs before marriage, it can be punishable with something as harsh as a death sentence. Nazli and Emre, escaping their homes, hope […]
Two siblings and three of their friends en route to visit their grandfather’s grave in Texas end up falling victim to a family of cannibalistic psychopaths and must survive the terrors of Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) and his family. This is one of those cornerstones of horror that you’re always aware of even if you’ve never […]
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Not everyone’s going to have an easy life. So this is about a young man (Tom Holland). He goes from college dropout to Army medic, and he serves two years in the Iraq war. He has PTSD when he returns home, which leads to drug addiction. This is an expensive habit to maintain, so he […]
Robbing Banks with PTSD – Cherry (2021)
If Hollywood is going to give screenwriting Oscar nominations to “Borat” movies, brace yourself for pranks, pranks and more pranks pictures. “Bad Trip” is more at the “Bad Grandpa” with Johnny Knoxville end of the practical joke pictures spectrum. A little edge, a few confrontations with angry rural America, waaaay too many bodily function/bodily fluid […]
Netflixable? A “Bad Trip” that goes a prank or two too far
It may be tempting to write “#Alive” off as just another zombie movie. In a way that’s what it is. This South Korean survival thriller from director and co-writer Cho Il-hyung doesn’t bring anything particularly new and it certainly doesn’t reinvent the horror sub-genre. At the same time, it’s hard not to enjoy its nimble […]
“Six Minutes to Midnight” is the sort of high gloss “programmer” Hollywood and Pinewood (and Shepperton, etc.) used to turn out by the dozens. The plot has Nazis, spies, action and preposterous coincidences and improbabilities, a “talks too much” villain, cheap thrills and sentimental sop. But thanks to a game cast and a clever and […]
Movie Review: On the eve of war, it’s “Six Minutes to Midnight”
Sound or the lack of it is an under-appreciated element of cinema, so much so that films that pay extra attention to it stand out. The Oscar-nominated “Sound of Metal” is wholly conceived around loud noise and learning to live in silent deafness. The filmmakers behind “Rose Plays Julie” take care to use muffled sound, […]
Movie Review: “Rose Plays Julie”
“The Courier” is an engrossing espionage thriller set, as so many of them are, at that one point when the Cold War seemed most likely to turn nuclear hot. Well-acted and early ’60s period perfect, about the worst you can say about it is that it’s a washed-out copy of “Bridge of Spies,” which is […]
Movie Review: “The Courier” plays his part in Preventing WWIII
A young woman (Lene Kqiku) awakes drugged and restrained in a strange house, but her captor may be more than he appears. I encountered this short film on Amazon Prime. The premise sounded interesting and with a runtime of only 7.5 I was intrigued. It does a good job of giving the film an undercurrent […]
Hutch Mansell is a mild-mannered everyday average Joe. His days are an endless cycle of monotony – get up, catch the bus, go to work, come back home, go to bed. The only real highlights of his week are his morning cups of coffee and missing the trash truck every Tuesday. Even his family seems […]
Following the enormous success of “Hamilton” what better time for Warner Brothers to release “In the Heights”. This musical drama is an adaptation of a Tony-winning stage play by Quiara Alegría Hudes and “Hamilton” mastermind Lin-Manuel Miranda. Jon M. Chu of “Crazy Rich Asians” fame directs the film from a screenplay written by Hudes with […]
First Glance: “In the Heights”
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. There is no bigger moment than the birth of a child. The newborn brought to life should be cherished and celebrated. It seems nothing could stop life from being happily ever after, except for one event, the worst nightmare of any parent – the kidnapping of the child. It’s […]
⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3 out of 5. We always need someone who can encourage us to do things like write, sing, or study. Anything that can help us improve and get better. Or just uplift our mood so we can focus on the positive side of our life and be happier. Written and directed by Marion […]
SXSW 2021: “Ma Belle, My Beauty”
Gruesome violence and grisly backwoods “surgery,” blood and stitches and axes and arrows, sharp stone shards left as booby-traps for the unwary dominate “In the Earth.” Kind of what you’d expect from a thriller built around mycorrhizal research deep in the forests of Britain, eh? The pandemic picture from the director of “Free Fire,” “High […]
Movie Review: In a Pandemic, Maybe Nature Won’t Share what’s “In the Earth”
