Late filmmaker Horace B. Jenkins’ early eighties African-American racially driven romantic drama Cane River gets a new lease on life with its millennium-era restored release nearly four decades after its attempted initial run. Indeed, Cane River epitomizes the smooth, but potently observational, character study of black division and togetherness — all under the complicated umbrella…
“And you will look with open eyes, And see the world clear, And when your crying is dried up, Then you will feel your heart, And know a new and deeper love” — Alexi Murdoch There are no men in Céline Sciamma’s (“Girlhood”) Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en…
It does feel that the romantic comedy is becoming a lost art. Big movie studios no longer want to invest in it, and if we think back to the biggest one of 2019, it was the movie “Long Shot” starring the odd coupling of Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen. And while it was good and…
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…
As an adult in her 30’s, hearing tales of mythical creatures such as unicorns, Santa Clause, or RuPaul seem entirely plausible. There’s still some sparkle left in the sun, so they must (like talking M&M’s) exist. Yet I find it hard to believe that we live in a world that still makes movies like The…
The bold debut, We (Wij), from Dutch director Rene Eller uses various unreliable narrators and a fractured chronology to create an intricate and arresting new spin on coming-of-age tropes. The ostensible setup is a typical teen movie: A group of friends find a shack in the woods and use it as a base for their…
Latest on the slate from Blumhouse Productions — known for their mostly neutered horror flicks (“Unfriended: Dark Web,” “Truth or Dare,” “Happy Death Day,” to name a few of the more recent ones) — is Fantasy Island, a retooling of a campy, Aaron Spelling produced television show. And much like that late 70s to early…
