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The John Wick series, now on cruise control for its third installment, has fallen into a trap. The filmmakers have become so intent on delivering “more of the same” that they have lost all sense of proportion. While hyper-violent, quasi-co...

It’s not hard to understand how something like Jojo Rabbit might divide audiences. Comedies about Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Third Reich can be difficult to sell, even if there’s an underlying seriousness to the subject matter. Writer/...

In the Batman universe, there are two kinds of darkness: the surface-deep emptiness of the Zack Snyder approach and Christopher Nolan’s baked-into-the-DNA aesthetic. For the stand-alone Joker, which is said to be neither prequel nor the star...

We all know the phrase "Keeping up with the Joneses," and so does first time writer/director Darrick Borte, who has used that as the basis for his debut, called (appropriately enough) The Joneses. The subject matter is simple enough: Borte has ele...

The Journey of August King is as close to a flawless motion picture as is likely to be produced by the film industry (independent or mainstream). Featuring strong acting, realistic set and costume design, an intelligent script, solid directing, an...

There’s no debating that Journey to Italy (also commonly called Voyage to Italy – the official Italian title is Viaggio in Italia) is an important film, but is being “important” enough to make a motion picture “good?” Loosely based...

JT LeRoy, Justin Kelly’s adaptation of Savannah Knoop’s memoir, strives to be more than a run-of-the-mill biopic about two women who perpetrate a con on the literary world. It wants to address issues of gender fluidity and hypocrisy. It wa...

One hallmark of great cinema is that, even when the story is tragic, a viewer can leave the theater both reflective and satisfied. Jude, Michael Winterbottom's ambitious, big-screen adaptation of Thomas Hardy's heartbreaking classic, Jude the ...

Some two decades ago, Sylvester Stallone actually did a little acting in a movie called Rocky. Since then, he's pretty much strutted his way through film after film, grunting convincingly and occasionally uttering a line or two of dialogue. He pr...

When today’s average movie-goer thinks of Judy Garland, the image that comes to mind is that of Dorothy Gale, the girl-next-door heroine of The Wizard of Oz. Few remember the Garland of the 1960s – a pill-popping alcoholic with a self-dest...