> If you were going to describe the films of Terence Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Long Day Closes, The House of Mirth) in one word, that word would not be “dynamic.”  Or “kinetic.”  Or, well, “exciting.”  Davies directs stately tableaux, impressive and sometimes moving, but rooted in nostalgia and regret. Which is why […]

  GLASS ONION (Netflix – November 4 in theaters, December 23 online):  After Rian Johnson’s Knives Out broke through to become one of the increasingly few non-IP-based mainstream hits in the market ($311.6M worldwide), Netflix moved aggressively to buy out the franchise, reportedly paying $450M for the next 2 crime-solving adventures of detective Benoit Blanc […]

  THIS IS THE END:  Worth A Ticket – Apocalypse Right Now Imagine an dystopian mumblecore extravaganza populated mostly by the Judd Apatow stock company, and you’ll have an idea of what to expect from THIS IS THE END.  Almost inevitably self-indulgent and uneven, the directing debut of Seth Rogen and his writing partner/BFF Evan […]

  THE GREAT GATSBY:  Watch It At Home – Moulin Gatsby Just for fun, let’s try to think of a worse match of filmmaker and material than Baz Luhrmann and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s THE GREAT GATSBY.  Judd Apatow’s Macbeth?  Woody Allen’s Lord of the Rings?  Michael Bay’s Remembrance of Things Past?  Jean-Luc Godard’s Shrek?  (Although […]

  42:  Watch It At Home – The Hallmark Baseball Hall of Fame It may well be that 42 is the Jackie Robinson movie audiences want.  It’s a straightforward, handsomely-produced, inspirational telling of a genuinely uplifting story, the 1946-47 baseball seasons when Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) broke the color line in American baseball, first in the […]

  It would be easy enough to fill a Worst 10 list with low-budget “found footage” horror movies, and sadly not that much more difficult to fill one with earnest, badly-executed indies, but where’s the fun in that?  No, if we’re going to throw stones, let’s throw them through some expensive windows. WORST BIG BUDGET […]

Oscar buzz has been trailing THE SESSIONS (which was then called The Surrogate) since it was unveiled at Sundance in January, and with good reason.  For Academy members, it doesn’t get much better than a warm “based on a true story” about someone with a serious disability who nevertheless maintains his sense of humor and […]

  A year ago, the idea of a “virtual film festival” would have seemed extremely far-fetched, but it’s become a regular practice in pandemic times.  The latest festival to take this path is Sundance, which in some ways is well-suited for this new normal, since it’s less built around starry galas than others.  (And there’s […]