The romantic comedy is my favorite genre, and because I have watched so many, I have developed quite a discerning eye for what’s good or bad in the rom-com world. So where does director V.W. Scheich’s Stars Fell on Alabama fall? Well, it’s not an absolute train wreck, but it’s not exactly good either. James…
Why am I here? What is the meaning of my existence? What happens when I die? What is the mind? What is my personality? Why am I? Deep and profound questions, well suited to a long cinematic chin-stroker such as Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solaris” and Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.” Or a swift, snappy animated…
“Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange” — William Shakespeare, “The Tempest” Film critic Roger Ebert once said, “All good art is about something deeper than it admits.” On the surface, Sofia Coppola’s (“The Beguiled”) On the Rocks is a light comedy about a…
The slasher film and stand-up comedy have some commonalities. Both rely on suspense and release, in one case the release being laughter and in the other, fear. Both can build up suspense with short sequences, be that a feedline/punchline structure or a jump scare; both can also escalate tension with a long form story leading…
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…
Fiona MacKenzie’s Tell Me I Love You is a romantic comedy about three best friends who make music together. Ben (Sam Clark, “A Deadly Dance”), Ally (Paulina Cerrilla, “$elfie Shootout”) and Melanie (Kaniehtiio Horn, “Death Wish”) also live in the same house, though this is temporary. What they require to complete their demo is time…
There are sometimes actors that embody a word so perfectly, they might as well be the textbook example of it. But when it comes to Bill Nighy, he straddles two particular words — elegant and odd. Even in his bolder roles (e.g., the aging rocker Billy Mack in “Love Actually”) Nighy never loses his poise,…
