There are character actors in movies that pop up occasionally and you’re overcome by a warm wave of recognition and delight. One unforgettable gal that used to drive me crazy was the mannish-looking Madame Spivy who appeared in such movies…
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We are all people on the go. Every morning on the subway I see people juggling coffee, newspapers, scrolling their iPhones- all the while careful not to make eye contact with the homeless man wandering down the aisle asking for…
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Is it just me, or does Thanksgiving make you think of Italian cannibal movies, too? Ah. November; bowls of stuffing and mashed potatoes, peas and carrots slathered with butter, steaming ladles of dark rich gravy, a golden-brown turkey carved on…
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The film Outlaw King, now showing on Netflix, has received a lot of press concerning the sight of actor Chris Pine’s penis. It still amazes me that the phallus still has the power to overshadow anything else about the movie.…
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This is a great month for home media- from vintage Orson Welles, rare Jean Cocteau, Robert Aldrich, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Lucio Fulci, not to mention Dennis Hopper’s controversial (never-before-on-home-video) The Last Movie and a tribute to peroxide screen vixen…
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Even Tolstoy, the great Russian author, understood the power of cinema. He was jealous of its limitless possibilities, compared with the written word, for combining editing, sound and image, and thought that film would be the artistic medium of the…
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They don’t call it “fall” for nothing. There’s a definite unfriendly chill in the air. Leaves are turning riotous colors somewhere, but not near you. (To be honest I always thought old dead leaves colorfully camouflaging their demise to be…
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In the new film Boy Erased, Lucas Hedges plays a young man sent to a gay conversion therapist by his Baptist preacher father (Russell Crowe) and mother (Nicole Kidman). What director Joel Edgerton does so well, adapting the autobiographical book…
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Maybe there should be a test that audiences take for the privilege of seeing a movie. Why not? You have to take lessons to get a driver’s license. Adopting a pet means submitting to a rigorous screening process. Something has…
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When people ask what I do for a living, as a film critic my response is always: “I sit in the dark.” Which sometimes begs the reply: “Oh, like a vampire?” Well, not exactly. But I do feel a real…
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