When 38-year-old Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen, “The Disaster Artist”), a sloppy and unkempt-looking journalist, falls for Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron, “Tully”), a highly sophisticated, intelligent, and political savvy politician, we know that we must be in fantasyland or in a Jonathan Levine (“The Night Before”) comedy. While Levine’s Long Shot challenges believability, there are enough…
The title of Penny Lane’s film, Hail, Satan?, is presented as a question. But from the viewpoint of this documentary on the contemporary non-theistic, activist movement that is the Satanic Temple, and the everyday people who run it, it’s pretty clear-cut — perhaps to the point of ironic confirmation, more likely to the point of…
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, —that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” — John Keats While it is generally agreed that imagination plays a prominent role in artistic creation, it is apparent to all but some academics and literary biographers with a particular agenda, that art cannot exist…
Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, whose previous films have expressed a rather jaundiced view of humanity (“The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” “The Lobster”), has found a most appropriate target for his cynicism in his “mainstream” comedy, The Favourite, the story of sickly 18th century British monarch Queen Anne (Olivia Colman, “Murder on the Orient Express”)…
If extra-terrestrial visitors eventually show up on Earth’s doorstep in flying saucers powered by anti-gravity reactors and then announce they’ve been here before, Bob Lazar will have dibs on a very exasperated “I told you so!” That’s pretty much the chief takeaway from Jeremy Kenyon Lockyer Corbell’s cheapo documentary with the no-nonsense title Bob Lazar:…
News Vendor: “I’m leaving.” Gordon: “Why?” News Vendor: “I found out I’m Jewish.” Gordon: “But you fought in the war.” News Vendor: “Tell it to the person that threw a rock at my window.” Gordon: “This is Budapest.” Budapest Noir, directed by Éva Gárdos (“American Rhapsody”) transports us to the Budapest of 1936. Zsigmond Gordon…
Wouldn’t you know it, another faceless dystopian drama featuring teens situated in manufactured peril courtesy of the distrust and paranoia of the older establishment has made an appearance. After all, Hollywood must be vigilant in its continued efforts to tap into the teen movie-going market (this time courtesy of Alexandra Bracken’s 2012 novel “The Darkest…
