We’ve devolved to a point in our paranoid history where remaking a movie about an off-the-grid government agency that knowingly employs a pedophiliac child killer to do its bidding could almost be as fresh as today’s headlines. Stephen King’s John Rainbird was such a man, but when it came time …
In ancient times, they might have called First Cow, an allegorical tale of two culturally discordant cowpokes who join forces to carve out a culinary slice of the American dream, “Figowitz and the Chinaman” and played it for laughs. Hired as cook for a company of Oregon fur trappers, Otis …
It’s the Super Bowl of fashion, and Andrew Rossi (Page One) takes us backstage at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual celebrity-studded fundraiser. Positioned in the cellar, the Met’s Costume Institute appears to be operated by a vampire academy of haute couture zombies, scuttling under the spell of gala chairperson, …
After the series opener, I vowed to Purge no more. Funny how air conditioning on a 105 degree day has a way of changing one's mind. White devils brainwash blacks into spending a governmentally sanctioned extended grace period killing other blacks. Describing three dudes on a stoop as, "Moe, Larry, …
Winning performances by Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse coupled with a thoughtful exploration of the daily rigors encountered by patients with cystic fibrosis are the main thrust behind this doomed-romance that’s worthy of the Lifetime Channel. (Even the score resembles a Cosentyx commercial.) No one told screenwriters Mikki Daughtry …
While sifting through the remains of his recently deceased grandmother’s apartment in Tel Aviv, Arnon Goldfinger came across documentation linking his grandparents - both refugees from Hitler’s Germany — with high-ranking Nazi minister Baron Leopold von Mildenstein. He then decided to turn his findings into a feature-length documentary. Instead of …
Jean-Pierre Melville's acutely minimalist take on American gangster films resulted in a formal probity unlike anything cinema has experienced before or since. Un Flic is his final contemplation of the genre he embraced. Both the reason for the opening heist and the rationale behind a seemingly well-heeled cabaret owner (Richard …
Meryl Streep stars as the titular doormat, a simpering society hostess who fancies herself an opera singer when in reality, her coloratura style approximates the sounds of barn owls being fed through an Osterizer. As her manager/dark cully, Hugh Grant (sympathetic and syphilitic, Flo looks the other way) keeps the …
As seen through directors’ Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga ’Scope frames, Ane (Nagore Aranburu) is but an insignificant sparrow of a construction-site manager observed in overhead shots (her back to the camera) or surfacing, if only for a moment, through the crook in a subway-rider’s arm. Why Ane is …
This month, the German Currents Film Festival proudly presents another two San Diego premieres at the Digital Gym. First up, Balloon, a fact-based tale, set during the cold war, of how two ordinary families attempted a daring escape along the East German border using a hot air balloon. It screens …
An ominous “controlled avalanche” at a Swiss resort sparks a tidal wave of emotion when Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) discovers her work-addicted husband, Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke), places his own safety, and that of his smartphone, ahead of their two kids. It’s a conspicuous moment of indecision that plunges their marriage …
Jackie Chan stands curbside within inches of an exploding car, yet it’s his daughter inside the store who falls victim to an IRA terrorist attack. Martin Campbell’s implausible staging of the revenge-motivating blast sets the tone for this dopey but nonetheless entertaining goulash of equal parts Death Wish, Taken, and …