Movie Reviews
The late ’50s-early ‘60s proved to be a wellspring of worldwide experimentation in documentary realism. Banking on unscripted reactions to outrageous situations as his key to success, American television personality Allen Funt tucked his Candid …
A shade of wet newsprint grey smudges the facade of the still-standing South Bronx apartment. From the opposite side of the street, the only visible sign of life in the tenement is a faint glow …
We begin by giving thanks to the local publicist who was swell enough to arrange a press preview of The Irishman in an auditorium to my liking. (Reading Cinemas Grossmont #5.) That said, it angers …
January 1, 2019. The following Nostradamic text, signed “Anonymous,” arrives at the stroke of midnight: “The year will end with Shia LaBeouf’s self-penned biopic cracking your top ten.” Did I miss an announcement piece in …
Has it really been six Christmases since Andy Fickman and Walden Media gifted audiences with the historically and hysterically misguided family frolic Parental Guidance? Last weekend, Fickman and Walden rattled the cage and East County …
The last thing a movie critic needs after a hard day at the multiplex is more visual distraction. Despite having that chunk of logic firmly planted in my brain, I still proceeded to heed a …
There’s a deep and sincere sweetness in the work of writer-director Taika Waititi. It’s a kind of relentless and innocent good cheer that persists in the face of horror — to the point where the …
The business card placed in my hand by a former student read: “Redeemable for one free blowjob.” He had my attention. “I found it inside the sleeve,” he explained as he handed the Rudy Ray …
Without much in the way of new releases available for review, it seems a good time to draw attention to the Reader’s weekly Festivals column, which highlights some of our city’s one-shot screenings and/or more …
My friend shook his head. “It’s been a bad year for movies,” he said. “A couple of blockbusters, and what else?” Well, a few things, at least. My favorite for the year so far is …
Pick a celebrity biopic. Any celebrity biopic. Beyond the Sea? Okay. With the lighting just so — and the camera at a safe distance from its subject — a person could swear that it was …
Director and co-writer Michael Tyburski’s The Sound of Silence is, fittingly enough, a quiet film. In telling the story of a room tuner — a man who solves his clients’ problems by identifying dissonant sounds …
Occupational Hazard #29, aka The Installment Plan: when a critic oversteps a self-imposed two-film-a-day limit, conks out halfway through a picture, and finishes watching it the next morning. The rating for Heiward Mak’s Fagara was …
There are two real dogs behind the canine stars of Los Reyes; their names are Football and Chola, and they really do spend their days (and nights) hanging around the titular skate park — the …
Luis Buñuel’s third film, Las Hurdes (Land Without Bread), was the director’s only documentary. For his first feature, visual effects designer Salvador Simó’s Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles puts into cartoon motion an …
The opening shot is a film’s calling card, an image of introduction. The best of them shape, inform, and herald the tone for what lies ahead. So instead of wasting an audience’s time with an …