The title The Man from Rome evokes the thriller genre, be that spy, conspiracy or crime. Think of “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,” or indeed, “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” True to title, The Man From Rome utilizes tropes of conspiracy, espionage, mystery and action. It comes…
“The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite, That ever I was born to set it right!” — William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5 According to the United States Sentencing Commission, the incarceration rate for blacks in the U.S. is over five times higher than whites. In addition, Black male offenders receive sentences…
Amazon Studio’s latest release is timely — the world is locked-down, the airline industry grounded, and most would-be passengers won’t be boarding a plane for the rest of the year (or more). 7500, from German writer/director Patrick Vollrath (Oscar nominee for the short, “Everything Will Be Okay”), won’t make those of us in this demographic…
The battle towards achieving any sort of self-esteem is tougher than anything Marvel’s catalog of heroes endure on a movie-to-movie basis. And in writer/director Paul Downs Colaizzo’s first film, Brittany Runs a Marathon, the lead character’s inner struggles are cartoonishly amplified to an almost disturbing degree. But with a stellar performance by comedy darling Jillian…
“A day once dawned, and it was beautiful. A day once dawned from the ground. Then the night she fell . . . The night she fell all around” — From the Morning, Nick Drake Directed by Belgian director Felix Van Groeningen (“Belgica”) and adapted for the screen by Luke Davies (“Lion”), Beautiful Boy is…
The term “Cold War,” especially in cinema, usually evokes images of espionage, militarism, geopolitics and stern men speaking tersely in jargon that is only comprehensible to those with a working knowledge of the genre. Pawel Pawlikowski (“The Woman in the Fifth”) defies such expectations with his film Cold War, a starkly beautiful romance that deftly…
Despite the way Wonder Wheel crashed and burned during the awards season, I figured it had potential due to it being a Woody Allen production. Although Woody’s a crapshoot for me these days, I never put much faith in the critical consensus around his recent movies (plus this one is about 1950’s Coney Island as…
