Dancing is an important element that helps tell the story of love, passion, struggle, pain and even death. It also reveals the identity of the one who performs it and of those who watch.
From director Jamila Wignot, “Ailey” is a beautifully crafted documentary that centers around Alvin Ailey, an African-American dancer, director, choreographer, and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
This recently restored film is an interesting look at George Romero and a controversial subject. The Amusement Park (1973) was a discarded film, originally created by Romero as a commission work for the Lutheran Service Society in Pittsburg, but not widely used and thought lost. The original 16mm reels were sitting in Romero’s basement aka […]
One Day YOU will be old – The Amusement Park review #georgeromero
It’s worth remembering that the script for Groundhog Day was, like, way darker than the final movie; the idea of a day endlessly repeating, and how that might feel for those trapped within it, has got legs. Remakes and sequels haven’t followed, and that’s a good thing, but the potential mileage is obvious, and it […]
Continue reading “Palm Springs”
Where were you in 2006? Back in the days of flip-phones and Netscape, you probably couldn’t have it much worse than Michael (Ozark’s Charlie Tahan). He’s working as a campus bus driver, ferrying boozed and drugged up students around a freezing Rochester New York, with the attendant vomit-stains and fractured feelings about life that predictably […]
A Quiet Place was perhaps the pinnacle of the sensory deprivation horror of the late 2010s – the last of a plethora of films that tried to reinvest the multiplex with a new sensory immediacy by focusing on characters who had one or many senses disabled. That movement didn’t necessarily feel exhausted by A Quiet […]
Krasinski: A Quiet Place Part II (2021)
Needless to say my expectations for the new Christian Petzold film were through the roof. The German filmmaker’s last two movies, 2014’s “Phoenix” and 2018’s “Transit”, are both snugly among my favorites from the last decade. His latest “Undine” has finally come to the States courtesy of IFC Films. And while it might not pack […]
Title – Dreamland (2019) Director – Miles Joris-Peyrafitte (As You Are) Cast – Margot Robbie, Finn Cole, Garrett Hedlund, Travis Fimmel Plot – During the heat of the Great Depression, lonely Texan teenager Eugene Evans (Cole) strikes up a friendship with on the run bank robber Allison Wells (Robbie) as the two hatch a plan […]
Film Review – Dreamland (2019)
For some reason, I’m getting requests to review super-hero movies, even though it’s hardly an area of expertise. There are good ones, The Dark Night, Thor: Ragnorok, Iron Man 3. But most of them have a written-by-committee feel; David Mamet described a summer blockbuster movie as being like a themed ‘pageant’, and there’s generally little […]
I’m sure it’s your favourite time of the week, because we’ve got another quiz on the lawn! This week the subject is a little contentious – the subject of taking a bath. Personally, and this is my own personal view, I prefer the act of taking a shower. Kramer appears to agree, and has a […]
Quiz: Bathing In Your Own Filth
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 8.5 out of 10. I know I’ve been on a bit of a ’70s run recently, with the likes of The Long Goodbye, The French Connection, The Parallax View and Marathon Man, so I thought this would be a nice change of gear with recent Netflix series Mindhunter. But, ah ha! I’ve fooled […]
How Mindhunter Makes Conversation More Frightening Than Blood
Ok, who hasn’t dreamed dark thoughts about some social media troll who’s made disgusting, cruel or hateful comments about something you’ve said, shared or posted? No one, right? There’s something very satisfying about the thought that some thinks-he-or-she-is-anonymous online troll realizing, with shock, that they aren’t protected from their ugly, sometimes violent opinions by “anonymity” […]
Movie Review: “The Columnist” has a REAL problem with hate mail
(Anne Marie Foy/Netflix) Where will Sandy’s life end up in the third season of The Kominsky Method TV show on Netflix? As we all know, the Nielsen ratings typically play a big role in determining whether a TV show like The Kominsky Method is cancelled or renewed for season four (in this case, we know season […]
The Kominsky Method: Season Three Viewer Votes
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 8.5 out of 10. This happens to be a great film, yet also an action film, yet also with a deep, dark message. How? In the modern age, it’s sad that all of those are basically exclusive from one another. But, back in the early seventies, The French Connection was just about ready […]
The Awesome Bleakness Of The French Connection
Something really strange happened to me while I was watching “Cruella,” the latest animation to live action Disney prequel/remake. Disappointed by Disney’s recent installments in their series of nostalgia cash grabs and not impressed with the trailers for this one, I was fully prepared for “Cruella” to not be a good time. But less than […]
It’s been a minute since Angelina Jolie has starred in a proper adult action movie- in fact, her last one was “The Tourist” in 2010 (god, remember “The Tourist“?). But Jolie is back at it, soon to appear in Marvel’s “The Eternals,” and currently starring in writer/director Taylor Sheridan’s “Those Who Wish Me Dead.” But […]
Review: “Those Who Wish Me Dead”
“American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally” is the new film from Michael Polish that tells the story of Mildred Gillars, later given the nickname “Axis Sally”. She was an American broadcaster who shared propaganda over the airwaves for Nazi Germany during World War II. After the war she was taken into custody and put […]
First Glance: “American Traitor: The Trial of Axis Sally”
Director – Joe Wright (Atonement) Cast – Amy Adams, Julianne Moore, Wyatt Russell, Gary Oldman, Fred Hechinger, Anthony Mackie, Jennifer Jason Leigh Plot – Agoraphobic New Yorker Anna Fox (Adams) lives a secluded life stuck in her apartment afraid to venture out into the outside world but […]
Film Review – The Woman in the Window (2021)
The appealing documentary Brewmance traces the evolution of the American craft beer phenomenon – and it’s quite a story. The United States may have been the richest and most powerful country in the world, but before bottled Anchor Steam came out […]
BREWMANCE: barley, hops, yeast and underdogs
Greetings again from the darkness. For anyone who still believes documentaries are dry and boring, the cure is this latest from Jonathan Blank, a filmmaker who returns to Holland 25 years after his first documentary, SEX, DRUGS & DEMOCRACY (1994). Entertaining and informative is a terrific blend as Mr. Blank uses interviews, statistics, and animation […]
SEX, DRUGS & BICYCLES (2021, doc)
Not everyone remembers that “Undine” or Ondine is a name from mythology, a water nymph of “The Little Mermaid” variety — one with a great gravitas attached to her love life. With or without that knowledge, the opening “break-up” scene in Christian Petzold’s German fantasy based on that myth is dark and intense. Johannes (Jacob […]
Movie Review: A dark romantic fantasy, in and out of the water — “Undine”
