High fructose corn syrup is terrible for your well-being, as are cute documentaries that saccharine coat an important message. Adorable, chipmunk-toothed writer-director Damon Gameau embarked on a 60-day diet of government regulated so-called “healthy” foods, and the end result plays on like an informative, albeit Super Size Me-ish audition reel …
Customers at the local butcher shop debate the mysterious circumstances under which Frida’s (Laia Artigas) parents died, never once stopping to consider the feelings of the little girl standing waist-high in their presence. After all, Frida’s a kid. She won’t understand, right? Nor can anyone comprehend how a child that’s …
Where were you on July 20, 1969? Unless you were among the thousands fortunate enough to have been in Mount Morris Park for the opening of the Harlem Cultural Festival, chances are you were glued to a television set witnessing another historical milestone: that was the Sunday on which man …
Last week, readers were introduced to the term “dansical,” a musical without singing. With its liberating lack of dependence on traditional song and dance routines and a script fashioned out of twenty or so poems, Summertime earns a category all its own: the slam poetrysical. First impression: 18 poems in …
Positioned on the border of Pakistan and China, K2 is the second highest point on earth after Mount Everest. In August 2008, eighteen mountain climbers scaled the heights of K2, but only 7 survived the descent. Being touted for its “breathtaking cinematography and jaw-dropping reenactments,” with nature supplying one “face …
Natasha (Yara Shahidi) is a Jamaican immigrant whose family is one day away from being deported. Daniel (Charles Melton) is a proud South Korean-American forced by his parents to attend an “important” admissions interview at Dartmouth. She believes that love isn’t a provable fact; he vows to get her to …
Whence came the revisionist line of thinking that apprises Super Fly as something more than a cheaply produced, at times ineptly staged (check out the ham-handed climactic shootout) crime picture? Remaking the pro-drug saga of a coke-pushing pimp in the era of #MeToo seems a daunting task. But for Director …
The sweetest, most wholesome documentary one is ever likely to see about a drug-addled, serial-womanizing, rock ‘n roll raconteur. Hollywood elbow-rubber Shep Gordon has managed the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Alice Cooper, and Emeril Lagasse. So it's no surprise when the film opens on enough visual name-dropping to wow the …
It’s Of Mice and Men meets Desperate Hours when a pair of thickheaded criminals on the lam take refuge in the home of negligent sawbones Rich (Chad Michael Murray) and his family. The main draw is Bruce Willis in a supporting role as Rich’s competitive dad. It’s not the worst …
A technologically feasible portrait of conductor-free commuter trains and driverless cars warms us to a metaphysical conundrum: you're dying and wealthy enough to afford a clone to continue in your absence that’s so convincing, even your spouse won’t notice the difference. Would you do it? Set ‘neath overcast skies, the …
Flash reaction: Udo Kier. Preparing a gall-bladder kabob in Warhol’s Flesh for Frankenstein? How about Johnny Mnemonic’s seedy handler? There’s the criminally connected Friedrich in Dragged Across Concrete. This week adds real-life queer icon Pat Pitsenbarger, the man who put the Pride in the Pride of Sandusky, wasting away in …
Not a Carrie Underwood vehicle, but rather, a taut western drama set in Australia’s remote Northern Territory frontier during the 1920’s. An easygoing Aboriginal man, Sam’s (Hamilton Morris) boss (Sam Neill) asks that he and his wife help a new neighbor work the land. Things quickly sour, leaving the good …
The latest from star/producer Jason Momoa is howlingly enjoyable nonsense, a father/daughter actioner with a last minute twist that tries hard, but can’t quite explain away the previous 109 minutes of lunacy bookended by spectacular rooftop dives in the North Shore from high atop Pittsburgh’s PNC Park. Ray (Momoa) blames …