“. . . something is happening here but you don’t know what it is? Do you, Mr. Jones?” — Bob Dylan Mr. Jones, directed by Agnieszka Holland (“Julie Walking Home”) from a screenplay (Holland’s first) is based on the real life story of Gareth Jones (flawlessly played by James Norton, “Little Women”), a young Welsh…
This blood-is-thicker-than-water melodrama, A Violent Separation, presents itself as a study in the ties that bind, a familial tale that is unfortunately all too familiar. In it, a cop brother named Norman (Brenton Thwaites, “Gods of Egypt”) helps his shadier brother named Ray (Ben Robson, “The Boy”) out of a particularly horrible jam, with each…
A part of the town of Edgartown, Massachusetts is a small island on the eastern end of Martha’s Vineyard known as Chappaquiddick. It’s famous because on July 18, 1969, a 1967 Oldsmobile carrying U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy (Jason Clarke, “Mudbound”), then 36, and Kennedy staffer Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara, “Megan Leavey”), 28, plunged…
The synopsis of acclaimed German director Werner Herzog’s 2016 thriller Salt and Fire, at first, seems to present a truly intriguing, unique and captivating story — “A renowned scientist is sent to Bolivia on an urgent mission to analyze a looming environmental catastrophe she along with her colleagues are deceived by a man claiming to…
There’s certainly no accounting as to why Ben Affleck (“Gone Girl”) would choose this, The Accountant, a tepid and convoluted thriller to star in, but all I know is I wish I could deduct the two-plus hours I spent at the cinema to see it; time I will never get back in a refund next…
While the subject of Concussion isn’t your typical Hollywood holiday fare, the film nevertheless touches many nerves, spotlights a terrific performance by Will Smith (even though he sports a mostly annoying Nigerian accent throughout) and takes the National Football League to task as the villain it was for many years as it seemingly ignored the…
“Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides” — William Shakespeare, King Lear Except for unrelenting bulldogs like Seymour Hersh (who had to publish his latest article outside of the U.S.), true investigative journalism seems to have become as obsolete as the 8-Track Tape. Tom McCarthy’s (“The Cobbler”) Spotlight, however, reminds us of what it was…
