You’ve probably been through it: You’ve just managed to make your way through your pockets and reached six to seven quarters in the midst of keys and keychains and used gum wrappers, get them into the coin slot of the vending machine, anticipating with your wet tongue the promised relief of your favorite snack when…
Nostalgically, the baby-boomer generation that had grown up with two-time Oscar winning actress Sally Field (“Norma Rae,” “Places in the Heart”) will identify and sympathize with her quirky turn as the sixty-something working stiff Doris Miller trying to fit into a youth-oriented world while pursuing love and companionship in co-writer/co-producer/director Michael Showalter’s ambitious but uneven…
Finding fantastic art that captures your amazement can be an exhilarating experience. So many thoughts will sprint through your mind as you try to figure out how and why a magnificent piece of work came to be. But sometimes, we don’t have to be alone in that process. We often share things that are fascinating…
First-time director Paul Dalio’s Touched with Fire, originally titled “Mania Days,” is an honest attempt to provide insight into the illness commonly known as bipolar disorder. The film depicts how two young poets are compelled to battle parents, doctors, and the cultural consensus to maintain their relationship which is considered dangerous by the community because…
British social realism is a cinema movement that developed in the 1960s with an eye to portraying the dour and grim reality of working class life in Britain. Such titles as “Kes” (1969), “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning” (1960) and “My Beautiful Launderette” (1985) explored social tensions around race, gender and sexuality, as well as…
Some romantic comedies can be conventional in nature and not really want to invest in anything substantive beyond the familiar follow-the-dots formula of lightweight lunacy. In director Christian Ditter’s romantic romp How to be Single the gloves come off and are thrown in an entirely different direction. Sure, one can applaud Ditter for not hanging any…
Love has an incredible ability to warm and soothe the soul (fireplaces can do that, too!) and it’s interesting to find stories of unexpected romances set in different times and spaces. It can present the illusion of freshness for a tale as old as fuzzy cucumber slices underneath a car seat. But the illusion is…
