When looking at Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler’s Radium Girls, it’s easy to be stuck at a cinematic fork in the road. The film features a cast of delightful up and comers (including Joey King of “The Act”) and is inspired by a true story filled with relevant energy. Yet when examining the final…
As a famous nanny once said, “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.” And in the case of actor turned director Craig Roberts latest film, Eternal Beauty, there’s a lot of sweetness to help digest this painful tale. And with such acting talents as Sally Hawkins and David Thewlis starring within it, this…
If Charlie Steeds’ The Barge People had been released in the 1980s or 1990s, it would have been released by Full Moon or Troma. That’s certainly no slight on those two companies, but rather a nod to two true-blue schlock producers of recent times. The plot is uncomplicated, the performances not overly nuanced, and the…
Trauma Center, a brutally dull alleged action movie that nominally stars Bruce Willis (“Glass”) as a world-weary cop, is not the kind of movie that anyone will remember in ten years, or, for that matter, even later this year. Its premise is flimsy, its execution is disjointed, its acting is atrocious, and its conclusion is…
A franchise’s future often lies in its past. The narrative need to look back upon the legacy of a series starter and the history of its characters provides a clear entry point for many sequels that may otherwise struggle to justify their existence beyond merely financial reasons. It’s a strategy used to moving effect in…
Writer/director Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”) puts a contemporary spin on Louisa May Alcott’s nineteenth century classic novel in Little Women, now in its eight film version. Alcott’s semi-autobiographical story about four sisters growing up in Concord, Massachusetts during and after the Civil War stands out for its warmth and celebration of family, its exquisite period…
The horror genre allows many opportunities to explore opposition. The opposition may involve faith in “The Exorcist,” gender in “Rosemary’s Baby,” class in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and sometimes all these and more, such as in “Drag Me To Hell.” With folk horror, the opposition is often between tradition and modernity, insiders and outsiders, new…
