Over two decades ago, when I had a big job “Lynch/Oz” at a big glossy magazine, my boss, the guy who hired me, got fired, and a new editor-in-chief was installed. I was sad “Lynch/Oz” and also mildly terrified. Largely because I was just like that whenever I was in a straight job situation convinced […]
HBO’s four-part mini-series “Burden of Proof” asks two heartbreaking questions that are inverses of each other. What if you were convinced your parents had something to do with the death of your sister? It’s a hard thing to even fathom and something that has shaped the entire existence of Stephen Pandos, whose sister Jennifer disappeared
“Simulant” a sci-fi murder mystery about humanoid robots and a potential robot uprising, has something that many other cheap “Blade Runner” and “I Robot” rip-offs don’t: a clear sense that the loss of life, artificial or otherwise, should be sorrowful. When characters die in “Simulant,” the movie’s creeping pace and dramatic inertia seem a little
Some of our best filmmakers have amplified career-long obsessions with faith into masterpieces like “First Reformed” and “Silence.” The prospect of the underrated genius of Abel Ferrara pondering the meaning of life through the story of Francesco Forgione, a world-famous Franciscan friar of the early twentieth century who showed signs of the stigmata, hums with
Last year, the South Korean action star Ma Deong-seok, aka Don Lee, took over the Korean cop thriller franchise “The Outlaws” originally titled “Crime City” in Korea. A blockbuster sequel to “The Outlaws” was released in May under the revised title of “The Roundup” which understandably shifts the series’ focus onto Lee and away from
“Rise,” by French filmmaker Cédric Klapisch, is not blazingly original by any stretch, and any moviegoer paying even the slightest amount can predict most of the plot’s moves. And yet, something is to be said about presenting a familiar narrative in a straightforward and undeniably entertaining manner. That is what Klapisch has done here, aided
Boyle traces the rise of the crisis, breaking down its chilling history with easily digestible facts and figures, through the story of her relationship with her sister “Anonymous Sister” Jordan, who overcame an opioid addiction a decade earlier. The crisis began in 1996, when the girls were children, and Jordan’s struggles with addiction began in
Convinced that the extraterrestrials who abducted her when she was 15 are finally coming back to take her with them, Winona (Sarah Hay), a bubbly young woman, asks her neighbor “Unidentified Objects” Peter (Matthew Jeffers), a little person mourning the death of a close friend, to let her borrow his car. He reluctantly agrees, but
When was the first time that Robert De Niro did a flat-out comedy? Probably “Midnight Run” in which he showed he was great at slapstick and comic banter, and introduced that signature expression that made this movie “About My Father” a bankable star, finally, as opposed to merely a great actor: the stone-faced look of
Nicole Holofcener continues to display an impeccable ear for dialogue the things people say, the things we wish we’d said, the things we’d like to take back with “You Hurt My Feelings”. Her depiction of a literary and artsy existence in New York City is specific and detailed, yet the human truths she reveals are
