Search for 2022

Televangelism and those who practice the dubious form of money-driven religiosity represent low-hanging fruit when it comes to satire. A lot of the material – Jimmy Swaggert crying crocodile tears, the eyes of Tammy Faye, etc. – comes across a...

I Wanna Dance with Somebody (full title: Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody) is as generic a musical bio-pic as one is likely to find. A by-the-numbers, slightly fictionalized chronicle of the rise and fall of pop singer Whitney Houston (...

When one considers a conventional romantic comedy, it’s the details that matter since the overall course must follow a predetermined trajectory. With When Harry Met Sally, one of the best traditional rom-coms of the past four decades, there ...

There’s irony at work here. Back when it this long-running franchise began in 1993 with Jurassic Park, it was all about the dinosaurs. The first movie to go all-in using CGI technology, the Steven Spielberg-directed blockbuster caused everyone t...

The nature of D.H. Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, lends itself equally to high-brow adaptations and soft-core porn. The best-known example of the latter was a 1981 production starring Sylvia “Emmanuelle” Kristel. Those looking ...

When one considers their mostly-exemplary catalogue, Pixar Studios deserves the benefit of the doubt. So, when sitting down to watch Lightyear, I did my best to curb my cynical bent for something that, at least on the surface, has all the earmarks...

First things first – Living is not quite as good as Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (of which it is a remake), but it’s a damn good re-interpretation. Although many of the plot details are identical and the acting is powerful in both instances, the b...

The Lost City is probably best viewed as a romantic comedy spiced by adventure elements rather than the other way around. Regardless, it’s passably sweet entertainment but, just as it’s unlikely to stick in the craw, it won’t hold a place in...

I’ve long since given up asking the question “Why?” when it comes to filmmakers turning to foreign language films for the storylines of new English-language films. Sometimes, in fact, the results can be quite satisfactory – take the 2022 r...

Director Patrick Hughes doesn’t have an impressive resume. His comfort zone lies in the realm of action-comedies that aren’t as exciting or as funny as they should be (to wit: The Hitman’s Bodyguard and its lamentable sequel). The Man from To...