According to intelligence expert Malcolm Nance, “Prior to Trump, every president maintained the continuity on how the constitution was upheld and defended.” Life changed the day after the inauguration, when presidential water bearer and spinner of “alternative facts” Kellyanne Conway grossly overestimated the number of attendees. It was her Trump-hating …
It’s been two years since Katherine Heigl has appeared in a movie. Imagine my horror when, halfway through the trailer for Unforgettable, a warning voice began yelling in my ear: Oh no... it can’t be... SOMEONE WENT AND BUDGETED ANOTHER KATHERINE HEIGL PICTURE! But my horror was (somewhat) misplaced: the …
A successful author of neo-gothic thrillers (André Dussollier) looking for a place to write meets model-turned-realtor Carole Bouquet and proposes on the spot. He confesses to his daughter (Mélanie Thierry) an inability to write when he’s in love, so the spiteful lass promptly decides to reward her old man with …
On the anniversary of her death, a ghost crashes a chat room and permanently deletes the friends that drove her to suicide. Why leave home to stare at someone else’s MacBook for 85 minutes? Because director Levan Gabriadze embraces the gimmick – in the aeons-ago played-out found-footage-in-real-time tradition of Blair …
Politics as reflected through the prism of a powerful love story between President of Botswana Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo) and British-born Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike). (His subjects referred to her as “the African Queen.”) Director Amma Asante skillfully blends color into her narrative, letting viewers know what part of the …
There is so much fact-fudging going on in The United States vs. Billie Holiday that for all the good it did screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks, the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, she could just as easily have fabricated a character out of whole cloth based on the life …
In a power play to gain the upper hand during an argument, doctor Jenny Davin (Adèle Haenel) refuses a stressed-out intern’s request to answer an after-hours knock at the clinic door. The knock turns out to have been that of a woman trying to escape her killer, and Jenny’s subsequent …
What happens when Falun Gong, a life-energy practice that advocates meditation, spirituality, and coordinated movement as a means of self-betterment, amasses more followers than the Chinese Communist Party? The punishments range from academic expulsion to having one’s shirt cleaned and pressed while you’re still in it. Or worse. Director Leon …
Did you know that opera made its American debut in New Orleans (not New York), and that Cuba once referred to New Orleans as its long-lost sister city? The all-encompassing topic of the origins and history of New Orleans jazz demands an epic seven-part documentary series along the lines of …
A sense of wistful nostalgia generated by Lindsay Buckingham’s iconic title tune playing under a series of amusing vacation photos faded along with the opening credits. Two newbies, John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein, take a vacation from filmmaking and drop a holiday load in this unwatchable remake of …
John Ford shot nine films in Monument Valley causing Peter Bogdanovich to remark, “It has become so identified with him, other directors are convinced that using it for a location would be plagiarism.” That didn’t stop Sergio Leone from doing his best work there and now it’s Lech Majewski’s turn. …
Vampires can not cavort in direct sunlight. That comes part and parcel with the legend, whether you’re Kathryn Bigelow looking for an easy way to cap Near Dark or now Mark Waters directing his senior class of St. Vladimir’s Academy through umbrella-covered strolls in the midday sun. The wanton trashing …
Vanquish finds director George Gallo careening in the opposite direction of a comeback. Ruby Rose stars as Victoria, a single mother whose past as a Russian drug smuggler comes back to haunt her when former mentor Damon (Morgan Freeman) kidnaps her sick daughter in exchange for one last job. Once …