Movie Reviews, Old and New
Like most musical theatre fans, I was all over the “Dear Evan Hansen” Broadway cast recording when it was released in early 2017. The collection of pop tunes written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who were also behind the popular musicals “La La Land” (which I like) and “The Greatest Showman” (which I loathe) […]
Read More Review: “Dear Evan Hansen”“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” opens with the facts. A swirl of news reports, photos, and headlines move across the screen, detailing the downfall of popular televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who built an empire throughout the 1970s and 80s with their Christian TV program “The PTL Club,” only to see it come crashing […]
Read More Review: “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”Clint Eastwood has long asserted that 1992’s “Unforgiven” would be the last film he made in the western genre, the genre that both began and defined his screen career. Beginning with a lead role in the late 1950s television series “Rawhide,” then embodying the now-iconic antihero the “Man with No Name” in Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” […]
Read More Review: “Cry Macho”“I like the regime. I like the routine.” So says William Tell (Oscar Isaac) of his time in prison, seen at the start of writer/director Paul Schrader’s “The Card Counter,” a line delivered in the moody noir anti-hero narration that continues throughout the film. The same could also be said of Tell’s time outside of […]
Read More Review: “The Card Counter”Unlike a lot of movies, “Malignant” doesn’t take its time to slowly build up the story, characters, and tension before diving into the grisly details. Rather, it starts off at a sprint and doesn’t stop—if anything, it just runs faster and faster as it progresses. Director James Wan cut his teeth on the horror genre, […]
Read More Review: “Malignant”Today, I’ve got some mini reviews of some movies that have been released on streaming services in the last couple of weeks, including Amazon’s much talked about (and much maligned) new take on “Cinderella,” a few new Netflix releases: “Afterlife of the Party,” “Worth,” and “Kate.” You can also now stream the filmed version of […]
Read More Streaming Movie Reviews“Ema” opens with a shot that lingers on a city street at night. The lights from the buildings and street lamps frame what turns an otherwise normal scene extraordinary: a burning traffic light. Fire imagery is repeated throughout the remainder of director Pablo Larraín’s film, both visually and within the story. Ema (Mariana Di Girolamo) […]
Read More Review: ”Ema”“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” begins with what may be my favorite opening sequence of any Marvel movie to date: a thousand years ago, the warrior Xu Wenwu (Tony Leung) finds and takes control of the ten rings, a weapon that grants their user great power and immortality. As the centuries pass, […]
Read More Review: “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”Happy September! Today I’m wrapping up August with a final batch of mini reviews of new streaming releases, ranging from pretty bad (“Sweet Girl”) to pretty good (“Val”) to hey, I actually really liked this movie and all of you haters are wrong (“He’s All That”). You can read my reviews of those movies and […]
Read More Streaming Movie Reviews“42nd Street” is the definitive backstage musical. It’s also the film that likely saved the movie musical genre. In the early 1930s, a slew of poorly made musicals following the advent of talkies failed to gain a following amongst critics and audiences. “42nd Street”, directed by Lloyd Bacon and featuring spectacularly-shot musical numbers choreographed by the great […]
Read More Cinema Classics: “42nd Street”