The curious case of a master forger and the complicated effort to end his deception is the focus of the documentary Art and Craft. For decades, an incredibly talented forger named Mark Landis managed to fool the very best curators at top museums all around the United States, and no one seemed to care. Sporting a frail […]
A once famous, now nearly forgotten, actor struggles to produce a new Broadway show in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). Back in the ’80s, Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) won the coveted role of iconic superhero Birdman and with it the commensurate fame and fortune of a superstar. Within a few short years, the role also […]
When did horror films become so formulaic and boring? That’s the question that I asked myself — not using a spirit board with a planchette — again and again after seeing Ouija. In particular, I’m sick of the screeching ghosts that serve no purpose other than to make an audience jump. I’m sure that there are examples […]
A gifted young jazz drummer enrolls in a prestigious jazz school where perfection is the only acceptable goal in Whiplash. Renowned drummer Buddy Rich was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Even though I knew nothing about him outside the show, I would always make a point of tuning in whenever he was […]
I have followed the career of Keanu Reeves like most moviegoers from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure to Dracula to Speed through The Matrix and beyond. Hell, the guy even played Siddhartha in Little Buddha for the few of you who actually saw him in that movie. He’s got an impressive list of films. Although […]
A war-weary tank crew takes on desperate Nazi soldiers in the final months of World War II in Fury. George C. Scott played the indomitable and eccentric General George S. Patton in the 1970 film Patton and said, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb […]
A surly, aging curmudgeon becomes an unexpected role model for his sympathetic young neighbor in St. Vincent. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote, “Into each life some rain must fall.” Vincent McKenna (Bill Murray) would abrasively dismiss such talk as the ramblings of a sorely misguided optimist. The warming rays of sunlight that others claim to find in […]
A determined reporter for a small-time paper uncovers a shocking government conspiracy that threatens his very existence in Kill the Messenger. While investigating the curious case of a major drug dealer who’s seemingly impervious to prosecution, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner) discovers a CIA connection that leads him ever deeper down a dark, disturbing rabbit hole. […]
High school students and their parents struggle with the changes that result from new technologies and the Internet in Men, Women & Children. Every generation faces a new set of challenges. Today, one of those challenges is in how the Internet and all that’s come as a result of it have forever changed the lives […]
Despite the best attempts to kill off these resilient creatures, vampires continue to be popular on television as well as the big screen. Shows like True Blood and films like the Twilight series perpetuate the fascination with vampires as well as their glamorization. Universal Pictures adds another monster to their canon with Dracula Untold. Although […]
A successful big-city defense attorney returns home to help his embattled father in The Judge. Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) is the kind of defense attorney whom every guilty defendant hopes that he can afford. He knows every nook and cranny of the law and loses no sleep over bending it to his client’s will at every possible […]
When I was a boy, I had a statue of the Virgin Mary in my bedroom as placed there by my mother. It’s a Catholic thing, I guess. The light above my bed cast some pretty creepy shadows in the room, and if I looked at this statue just the right way, I thought that […]