There’s a theory–I’m not saying I subscribe to it, but it’s out there–that you can judge the times by the horror stories it tells. In my childhood and youth, stories about ghosts and vampires–life after death–prevailed. Later it became the slasher and the serial killer. Today it’s zombies. Everywhere you turn around, you’re surrounded by...
Though I’ve enjoyed every movie I’ve seen so far this year, I had been watching heavy movies, so last weekend, I felt in the mood for something lighthearted. Jumanji: Welcome the the Jungle looked promising. The trailers promised a funny movie, and the talent seemed poised to keep the promise. I like Dwayne Johnson...
Octave Mirbeau’s The Diary of a Chambermaid, published in 1900, is often considered an erotic classic, but in its pages, there’s as much social commentary, if not more, as there is sex. Much of the commentary comes from the Dreyfus Affair, which exposed antisemitism in turn-of-the-century France, but the novel also compares and contrasts...
Hostiles begins brutal and it remains brutal throughout its runtime. It’s a story about war and the men and women who experience it. The Indian Wars are over, but the cultural conflicts and land disputes that ignited them remain, as do racial hatred and distrust. The film tells a personal story about Captain Joseph...
Since this is the third week in a roll when my choice of movie is an Oscar contender for Best Picture, the reader would be forgiven if he or she thought I was surveying Oscar nominees. I assure you I have no such desire or intention. Since the Oscars are the most anticipated and...
Unfortunately at the movies last weekend, I saw the trailer for the upcoming movie based on Annihilation. Since I wanted to review the novel before I knew a lot about the movie, I’ve been avoiding the trailer. But it played at the theater, and since it would’ve been silly for me to leave as...
As the movie ended and the credits rolled, the theater emptied out fast, as if the audience couldn’t wait to escape. I don’t think Phantom Thread went over well with my fellow moviegoers, and after they left, I sat in the empty auditorium and watched the credits and pondered what I thought. I knew...
We need to get fear back into the vampire tale! I thought that back in 1990. Maybe it was 1991. I’m not sure, because I didn’t write these things down back then like I do now. I had just finished reading Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned, and I hated it so much I...
Tom Hanks! Meryl Streep! Steven Spielberg directing! A political drama in the Age of Trump the reminds us of the importance of Freedom of the Press and the duty for news organizations to make public what the government wants kept secret! I went to The Post with high expectations. I didn’t expect a good...
The Boatman is a Western, but it’s unlike any other Western you’ve had seen. It’s set in modern times, so it belongs in the Contemporary Western genre with such films as No Country for Old Men, Brokeback Mountain, and last year’s Wind River. Unlike those movies, though, The Boatman is a low-budget independent film...
