In TV, it’s called a bottle episode. Twenty minutes, (or forty, or sixty . . .) that take place on a single set with a limited cast. Though you might struggle to bring one to mind immediately, it’s quite a common occurrence, happening in shows like “Community” (they take real pride in their bottle episodes),…
Florence Foster Jenkins singing voice was flat and off-key, yet her generosity to others, friendship with music greats such as Arturo Toscanini, and love of music brought happiness to many during the dark days of World War II. Labeled by some intemperate critics as “the worst singer in the world,” she is given something of…
Passengers, the newest Sony Pictures (Village Roadshow) release, directed by Morten Tyldum (“The Imitation Game”), is a visually stunning outer space adventure with a very good cast (Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen, Andy Garcia and Laurence Fishburne) that fails to lift off due to an earth-bound, cliché-ridden script. That last item can be blamed…
Two powerful lead performances drive Fences, a tale about a black family living in Pittsburgh during the mid-1950s, that, while the overall experience is mostly negative, the impact is nonetheless a powerful and emotional undertaking. The screenplay is adapted from the 1983 Pulitzer Prize winning play by the late August Wilson, which was revived in…
Why Him? The real question is why me? Why am I always searching for the seemingly most elusive item on Earth, not a holy grail or world peace, but a decently funny comedy that can a) make me laugh consistently and, b) not devolve into a juvenile series of f-words, toilet humor and disgusting situations….
“And I shall rest my head between two worlds, in the Valley of the Vanquished” — Léolo, Jean-Claude Lauzon Whether Harvey Weinstein’s purpose in producing Lion was to add to his collection of Oscars or just to tell a sweet, heartfelt story about a lost boy searching for his home, the result is that he…
There’s no clever way to lead into this, so I’m just going to state it plainly: Collateral Beauty is a disaster in every possible way. Trying to explain why is a tall order, as I will have to disclose core plot details that were cleverly withheld from the misleading trailers. So if you consider that…
