If you’re a genre nostalgic who’s looking for a romantic comedy that could’ve been made in the ‘90s or early aughts, and that features all of the comforting types (including the widowed protagonist, the dreamy lost love, the sassy, truth-telling best friend, the equally hunky potential new love and his cynical yet adoring sister) “The […]
There has been a growing subgenre of non-fiction films that I jokingly call “Internet Bad” movies. The worst of these feel like shallow fearmongering, playing up the fears of older viewers like a modern “Reefer Madness.” Part of the problem with this subgenre is that too many filmmakers try to paint something as complex as
At eighty-one years of age, Paul Simon is still producing the most interesting music of his career. That makes over six decades of Simon’s impact on the popular music consciousness from his earlier days as an Everly Brothers-inspired double act with collaborator/nemesis Art Garfunkel to his branching out into world music. Now, in his twilight
In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon (2024) Read More »
Another day, another traffic jam. A father, François (Romain Duris), chides his son Émile (Paul Kircher) for feeding the family dog potato chips. He tells his son to stay away from them as well since they’re probably not very good for him, and Émile rolls his eyes as any 16-years-old would. They argue. Émile gets
The word “sport” does not begin to do it justice. Adventure Team Racing is the most extreme, demanding, endurance activity in the world. It makes the Iron Man combination of running, swimming, and biking look like a game of hopscotch. An adventure race can involve running, biking, climbing, kayaking, and any other imaginable strenuous movement
Ambiguity and extreme emotional states occur simultaneously in Jessica Hausner’s films, where what “is” is not a simple question, and what we should take from all of it is equally obscured. Her characters are in extremis, and their emotional or spiritual states create a separate reality. The everyday business of going through life doesn’t come
Gene Wilder couldn’t have chosen a better stage name. “Gene” is so ordinary, so sane. It promises gentleness: genial, congeniality. But Wilder? That’s the sort of actor who could play Leo Bloom, Willy Wonka, Dr. Frankenstein’s grandson, or The Waco Kid. Sure enough, from his breakout role as Bloom, the accountant who gets pulled into
Two years ago Lindsay Lohan had her first starring role in almost a decade in the Netflix Holiday film “Falling for Christmas”, which she elevated with her innumerable charms. Re-teaming with director Janeen Damian, Lohan has returned to that same kind of screwball romantic comedy formula for “Irish Wish,” this time with a bit of
You’ve probably seen the viral video. An elderly British man named Nicholas Winton sits in the front row of a television studio watching a silly chat show called, “That’s Life.” The host explains to the viewers that more than 40 years earlier, just before World War II, as the Nazis were invading Czechoslovakia, Winton arranged
In his second directorial effort, the underwhelming “Knox Goes Away,” Michael Keaton portrays a heady hitman diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of dementia. His illness is so grave, when he’s finally diagnosed, he’s told he only has a few weeks to get his affairs in order. It’s a fascinating premise by screenwriter Gregory
