To find an uninteresting interview with a survivor of the holocaust is an impossible task. These are, after all, firsthand accounts of nightmares made real; memories from the extremist boundaries of the human experience. It’s akin to watching Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin discuss landing and walking on the moon, describing experiences…
Movies have been telling stories about dogs in the military since Rin Tin Tin starred in silent films like “A Dog of the Regiment” way back in the 1920s. Those were made-up stories that turned “Rinny” into one of Hollywood’s biggest money-makers of the pre-sound era (supposedly even getting him the most votes for Best…
For a film franchise that began in 1931 (with Boris Karloff in the original title role) and includes literally dozens of pictures, there are still some new things I learned from this latest edition (directed by Alex Kurtzman, “People Like Us”) of The Mummy. For instance, mummies and other otherworldly entities — even though buried…
Gridlock is a 20-minute tension-filled short built entirely from top to bottom on the hope that its twist ending can shock its audience. Everything filters through to that ending via a threadbare plot that sees a father lose his daughter in a traffic jam on a rural road surrounded by forest. The dad (Moe Dunford,…
As rendered in the gut-wrenching “Krisha,” director Trey Edward Shults’ debut film, those with blood ties are hornets that can sting more than their natural counterpart. The within-is-more-volatile notion is elevated in Shults’ second outing, It Comes at Night, that takes place in a world upturned by an unnamed disease. For a while now, 17-year-old…
“Lawrence of Arabia” is a respected title that conjures images of adventure, masculinity and the mystic charm of the Middle East. A film of epic proportions, it glamorized explorer T.E. Lawrence, an academic whose presumed knowledge of the culture and politics of the area impressed both English and Arabic leaders. Unbeknownst to most, however, English…
In Delusion, Frank Parrillo (David Graziano, “A Life Not to Follow”) is a middle-aged man still coming to terms with his wife’s death three years prior. After receiving a bizarre letter from her, he begins to move on and pursue a new love life. After he initiates a relationship with a mysterious woman (Jami Tennille,…
