No one can tolerate Allison’s (Aubrey Plaza) on-set behavior, so the actress sets her sights on another form of torture: directing. Creative juices all but parched, Allison opts to spend a little emotional tuneup time at a woodsy bed and breakfast owned and operated by an unhappily married couple: musician …
Spike Lee opens with the money shot from Gone With the Wind (“a romance set in Auschwitz”), then jumps forward a few decades to a time where a black police officer was actually able to infiltrate the KKK. (Guys who wear pointy hoods don’t generally do so in order to …
Blacklight — As he sees it, undercover agent Travis Block’s (Liam Neeson) calling is an ability to save the souls of good FBI operatives who have temporarily crossed over to the dark side. After busting up a gang of Johnny Rebs, Block turns his attention to Dusty Crane (Taylor John …
In his first turn as a full-blown villain, Ethan Hawke stars as “The Grabber,” a serial killer whose plans are diverted when his latest kidnap victim, 13-year-old Finney (Mason Thames), begins receiving calls from the disconnected phone in his dank basement accomodations from five previous fatalities offering advice on how …
There is something surreal about Swedish journalists, “fueled by curiosity and naïveté,” gaining unlimited access to America’s black-power movement. The raw footage sat neglected for 30 years, as though waiting for documentarian Göran Olsson to liberate it. Add contemporary commentary by scholars and surviving activists, and the result is an …
Three brothers – Rocco (Peppino Mazzotta), the brains, Luigi (Marco Leonardi), the brawn, and Luciano (Fabrizio Ferracane), the goat-herding outcast – each with a different vision of what direction the “family business” should take. The stories are workaday, but the storytelling is anything but in Francesco Munzi’s instant gangster classic. …
In many ways, this is the best James Bond picture since Daniel Craig assumed the role. Imagine two sibling 007s for the price of one: Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and her little sister (a feisty, pug-nosed Florence Pugh). The act of leaving home to find a home among superhero freaks …
Manji (Takuya Kimura), a proficient samurai consumed by the slaughter of his mentally challenged younger sister, accepts a girl’s request to find the men who killed her father and raped her mother. (Hana Sugisaki co-stars in the dual role of Manji’s sister and employer). Even before the opening title card …
It’s Rocky joins the Head Injury Club for Men in this half sports/half disease-of-the-week biopic of world “champeen” pugilist Vinny Pazienza. After a head-on collision finds “Paz’s” sawbones fitting him for a Halo vest, his spirit and determination… Must I go on? The trailer offered a Viewer’s Digest condensed version, …
Promising young painter Dezzy (an indomitable Dora Madison) was clean and sober — until the day her agent freed her of his services. We spend half the running time watching as Dezzy celebrates the defeat by smoking, snorting, and ingesting anything she can get her hands on. That includes a …
Fact-based historical drama as seen through the eyes of 16-year-old Arturs Vanags (Oto Brantevics), a fresh-faced Latvian teen who, along with his father, is spurred into battle after a Jerry shoots dead his mother and the family dog. (Shades of Inglourious Basterds: just moments prior to her demise — and …
Just passable gross-out comedy, in which three obsessive parents (Leslie Mann, John Cena, and Ike Barinholtz) — all far more repulsed by the thought of lost virginity than their respective begats — combine forces to cockblock their daughters on prom night. As it must in all Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg productions, …
It isn’t long after the Connolly sisters lay their mother to rest that a tangled web of murder and prostitution starts getting woven in this Amazon Studios original. Family secrets commence bubbling over, with enough residual spatter to send sisters Pris (Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor) wading waterproof …