Movie Reviews

The first paragraph of my review of Kenneth Branagh’s 2015 live-action Disney reimagining of Cinderella contains this sentence: “This is definitely not a modernized, jaded, snarky take on the Cinderella story; for those of you wanting the full-on fairytale, where the noble are just, the damsel in distress is saved, and all get their just deserts, […]

The best of art makes us uncomfortable, revealing our blind spots and forcing us to look at things differently, as both individuals and as a society. American history is rife with racial injustice, and there is no shortage of evidence that plainly demonstrates that we haven’t risen far above our unsavory past. In 1992, Bernard […]

As we continue to dig out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s obvious that the cinema world will have something to say about what we’ve gone through and what we’ve become. There have already been more than a few pandemic-based films of varying quality – some shot on Zoom, some shot with traditional methods – but […]

Superficially, CODA is the same kind of “be who you are” coming-of-age story where a kid from the wrong side of the tracks (really, is there a “wrong side of the tracks” these days?) finds a talent that makes them shine, lifting them out of the hell that is high school and bucking their family’s […]

Hats off to the late director Benny Chan, whose memorable films include a high-flying remake of Fist of Fury with Jet Li, a passel of Jackie Chan movies (among them Who Am I?, New Police Story, and Rob-B-Hood), and others which stocked a full 30-year career. Benny Chan’s final film, Raging Fire, is released today […]

Not going to lie: My first reaction to Here After (also known as Faraway Eyes) was one of admiration, and I even had a full review prepared to tell you about it. But the further I got along in the review, the more I realized that I was making excuses for this movie. (And if […]