The synopsis of acclaimed German director Werner Herzog’s 2016 thriller Salt and Fire, at first, seems to present a truly intriguing, unique and captivating story — “A renowned scientist is sent to Bolivia on an urgent mission to analyze a looming environmental catastrophe she along with her colleagues are deceived by a man claiming to…
Beth and Kate (Jocelin Donahue, “Knight of Cups”) are twins, and each is experiencing her late 20s in quite a different way. Kate is stable, confident and popular; Beth, living with her parents, is nervous and reclusive, and fearful of relapse. Beth is afflicted by “sleep paralysis,” a condition whereby the mind is awake but…
In Israeli-American director Joseph Cedar’s masterful film, Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, a ridiculously expensive pair of shoes given as a gift leads to a friendship between rising Israeli politician Micha Eshel (Lior Ashkenazi, “Encirclements”) and Norman Oppenheimer (Richard Gere, “Time Out of Mind”), an American businessman, consultant…
In Circles, a based-on-fact drama about crop circles in England, is unfortunately inert and dead on arrival. It’s a muddled ball of confusion that struggles fruitlessly to provide some sort of context or emotional connection among the characters, the audience, and the plot. Otherwise, it’s not really terrible. A reporter, Lara (Cassandra Thomas, “The Duchess…
Not your average bad movie, it’s definitely trying to be good. It’s just not quite there.
Nowadays, we could probably use all the knowledge and understanding of mental illness that we can possibly obtain, so Cyrus Trafford’s well-intentioned short film, The Voice in the Head, certainly has something meaningful to offer. The 12-minute piece uses a young woman’s final exam essay question in a psychology class to probe our perception of…
“. . . You can’t handcuff the wind, If you try you’re gonna fail It’s like trying to put thunder in jail . . .” So sings Richard Thorncroft (Julian Barratt, “ABCs of Death 2”) who experienced a moment of fame in the late eighties, playing Bruce P. Mindhorn, “the best plain-clothes detective the Isle…
