Within a few minutes of watching The Father, you may get the sense that this is a dialogue-intense film that seems to bear a resemblance to a stage play. This perception is enhanced by the closed space in which the action occurs — a suitable, lived-in apartment of an educated man with décor that includes…
Girl, written, directed and starring Chad Faust (“Better Start Running”), is effective when it comes to mood and atmosphere. The problem, however, is that there isn’t enough substance to make Faust’s stylish choices mean something, so this thriller comes across as more empty that gratifying. It begins with the titular “Girl” (Bella Thorne, “The Babysitter:…
Simon West’s Skyfire is equal parts “Jurassic Park,” “Armageddon,” and, well, “Volcano”: A tireless, heart-pounding leap beyond such niceties as logic and character development into the well-trod terrain of super-duper action movie. And by that purple prose, I mean that it’s a damn fine movie to veg out to and just enjoy for what it…
“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…
Welcome to the Circle, a cult in the middle of a remote forest. Blessings on you! Good tidings and all that! When a father and his daughter are attacked in the woods by a bear (maybe?), they find themselves rescued by The Circle, a small group consisting of lovely females and a bald leader who…
“Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise.” — Paul McCartney, “Blackbird” For most parents, the process of letting go of grown children is difficult under normal circumstances, but for children with special needs, it can…
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,…
