THE NUN 2 is not a complete waste of time. It is a superbly shot film, and directed with a certain understated flair by Michael Chaves, who, along with Taissa Farmiga, gets about as much as can be extracted from an anemic script. The result is decidedly underwhelming, verging on dull despite all the ickiness.… Read More »
BREAKDOWN
As summer comes to a close, so does the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s 2023 season of free live performances of its scathingly scintillating production of BREAKDOWN. This year, you can also enjoy it as VOD here through 9/4, password PowerToThePeople!, yes the exclamation point is part of the password). Every year the Troupe takes on… Read More »
EQUALIZER 3
There is a reason that the Equalizer franchise has been so enduring. From television series to franchise powered by Denzel Washington, and then back to a series with Queen Latifah taking over from Edward Woodward. There is something hopeful about seeing the wicked punished and the innocent vindicated. And so it is with EQUALIZER 3,… Read More »
GRAN TURISMO
You have to wade through a great deal of treacle in GRAN TURISMO before you get to part of the film that really works. Based (very loosely) on the true story of the gamer who became a race car driver, the first act plays like a very well executed cliché, albeit with a superbly edited… Read More »
GOLDA
GOLDA does not take the traditional route in telling the story of the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Instead, it focuses on the defining moment of her political career, a moment that made her, in the closing coda to the film, a hero abroad and controversial in her own country. It is a portrait etched… Read More »
BLUE BEETLE
When a film wears its heart on its sleeve the way BLUE BEETLE does, it’s hard to dislike it. Not impossible, but very, very hard. Still, there’s a screenplay that can’t quite decide what tack to take as it moves awkwardly through plot beats that feel less like a story and more like the generic… Read More »
BARBIE
At one point in BARBIE, Greta Gerwig’s pink-plastic jab at the patriarchy, America Ferrara, as Gloria, an ordinary woman, gives an impassioned précis on exactly what women face in the current social climate. It is a clarion call that should reverberate through the ages and one that will, like the film in which it appears,… Read More »
TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM
Seth Rogan has given us a refresh on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that 80s TV phenom that delivered as advertised. In TMNT: MUTANT MAYEM, we have the origin story of the unusual Chelonians and their equally mutant rat father, Splinter (Jackie Chan). Unlike the previous TMNT films, and the iconic Nickelodeon series, the visuals… Read More »
JULES
JULES is a wise and gentle comedy-drama about the vicissitudes of aging and the balm of a really good listener. There’s also a UFO and its extra-terrestrial pilot thrown in for good measure. Gifted with three well-tempered performances by Ben Kingsley, Jane Curtin, and Harriet Sansom Harris, it takes a clear-eyed approach to the… Read More »
TALK TO ME
TALK TO ME is a supremely terrifying film mixing the horrors of the restless undead with the greater horror of emotionally absent parents. The directing debut of brothers Danny and Michael Philippou is a story of quiet despair that grows geometrically as it progresses for its teenage protagonists who learn too late that the spirit… Read More »