The San Francisco I knew as a young man was a place with a sense of community and culture that welcomed the adventurous, the imaginative, the creative, and the marginalized. Though, like every other major U.S. city, it was not always a place of harmony, and some neighborhoods had its dangers for outsiders, yet it…
Robert Redford (“Our Souls at Night”) is an American icon and, in David Lowery’s (“A Ghost Story”) The Old Man and the Gun, has ostensibly made his final curtain call as an actor. Adapted by Lowery from a 2003 article in the New Yorker about Forrest Tucker by David Grann (“The Lost City of Z”),…
Some well-meaning films, no matter how big or small in scale or scope, have the undeniable power to reveal truths however biting they may be. Noted Bay Area-based writer-director Boots Riley’s (from the political hip-hop group known as “The Coup”) dark satirical comedy Sorry to Bother You is just such one of those unassuming and…
There are many variables transpiring in the gritty, yet grating, urban crime flick Proud Mary that want desperately to embrace themes of unconventional motherly instincts and clichéd street-wise mayhem. Unfortunately for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” Oscar-nominated star Taraji P. Henson (who also has an executive producing credit for this lopsided actioner), her labored…
The prospect of suddenly going blind is enough to fill most people with dread. And going blind is exactly what happens to the people of an unnamed city, perhaps even the entire world, in Blindness, the new film by Fernando Meirelles based on Jose Saramago’s excellent novel of the same name. Blindness is a powerful…
Time for a kick-ass action movie — the first of 2007. This time around we’ve got Jason Bourne, going after some bad-ass government officials who have wronged him . . . oops, I’m sorry I’ve got the movie confused. I’m supposed to be reviewing Shooter and I’ve started to review “The Bourne Identity!” I’ve got…
