I suppose the title, “The Christmas Pageant That Almost Never Was” would have worked, but Believe is fine. After all, it’s the holiday season, so we’re entitled to a little suspension of (dis)belief, as the newest faith-heavy film from writer/director Billy Dickson in his major debut, conveys. Drawing allusions to Frank Capra’s 1946 classic, “It’s…
The Romanian found-footage movie Be My Cat: A Film for Anne is about an aspiring filmmaker who goes to some unusual lengths to convince actress Anne Hathaway to appear in one of his films. This sounds like a fine premise for a horror movie, but the result is more of an uninspired, tedious thriller wannabe…
Frank & Lola is a pleasant surprise at the end of the year as Oscar season looms ominously in the distance. If adverse to the dreck that usually goes up for the awards, Matthew Ross’s debut is an enjoyable and dark alternative.
Oh boy. There’s nothing quite as middling or eyebrow-raising as a belated sequel, is there? 2003’s “Bad Santa” was a morbid, distasteful, apathetic middle-finger to more warm and fuzzy, politically correct holiday ventures and I absolutely love it. Upon hearing that a sequel was finally coming I was excited, although I knew it could fall…
In an effort to recognize every genre and cultural sub-group, Walt Disney Animation Studios has scored again with Moana, a tale recounting how Pacific Islanders traversed the South Seas in search of lands to inhabit. Here, a few archaeological facts are mixed with the Legend of Maui, a demigod/shape-shifter/adventurer who, with his trusty ivory fish…
Love. Loss. Regret. Betrayal. Pain. Memory. Revenge. Beauty. These are the oh-so-jolly palate of Nocturnal Animals, Tom Ford’s haunting, ethereal and quite extraordinary second feature. Ford crafts a remarkable, trifurcated narrative with exquisite precision, slipping between the life, memories and imagination of Susan Morrow (Amy Adams, “Arrival”) in a way that demands attention, stirs the…
The Possession Experiment, centers around, as you might guess, a possession experiment. But don’t let the lack of creativity in the title sway you into thinking that the filmmakers have saved their imaginations for the rest of the movie. What you have here is a plot that’s both holy and wholly contrived, albeit with some…
