I don’t claim to know them in any way, shape or form though, truth be told, I wouldn’t mind if I did. Nonetheless, from what I’ve seen of Chris Evans (“Avengers: Endgame”) and Ana de Armas (“No Time To Die”) from tabloid news (which admittedly is a terrible source to base an opinion upon) they…
The good news about the film Condor’s Nest, an international revenge thriller set in 1950s Latin America that features a surviving WWII American airman Will Spalding (Jacob Keohane, “Halloween Kills”) in search of a sadistic SS Colonel (Arnold Vosloo, “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”), is that it conforms to a three-act structure. This is…
“Hit the road Jack and don’t you come back, No more, no more, no more, no more. Hit the road Jack and don’t you come back no more” — Percy Mayfield A road trip that builds on Abbas Kiarostami’s “A Taste of Cherry” and Jafar Panahi’s “Taxi,” Jafar’s son Panah has built on his father’s…
“Life’s greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved” — Victor Hugo Winner of the Golden Lion Award at the 2021 Venice Film Festival, Audrey Diwan’s (“Losing It”) harrowing abortion drama Happening takes place in rural France during the 1960s, a decade before abortion was legalized in France. Based on the memoir by Annie…
What do you do when you’ve made multiple successful films in New Zealand, graduated to Hollywood blockbuster franchise installments while maintaining your idiosyncrasies and then won an Academy Award? In the case of Taika Waititi, the answer is to make another blockbuster where the idiosyncrasies are even more pronounced, to an extent that may amuse…
There was a popular book written in the late 1980s by Robert Fulghum named “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” It is filled with tried and true lessons about growing up: “Hold hands and stick together,” “play fair,” “look at yourself,” and other snippets of suggestions we learn about early in…
In 2002, the superhero genre achieved an ideal form in “Spider-Man,” which built upon aspects from the Superman and Batman franchises as well as 1998’s “Blade” and 2000’s “X-Men.” Over the subsequent two decades, the genre developed and expanded, but a consistent aspect throughout is the cinematic expression of the experience of superpowers. This was…
