Screen
Here’s to the ones who dream
The city of Los Angeles is home to a million stories, all of them different, many of them sad. They don’t always start out...
Poised for monster success
Demons of mediocrity, be gone! Here we have a shrewd sequel a touch better than the original...
Me and my pal Adolf
Jojo (Roman Griffin
Davis) is a good little Nazi. Jojo’s only 10 years old, but his brown shirt is
spiffy, his red arm badge is on...
Storytelling for a cause
Herschel Goldberg wants you to see Liyana.
“The core message is something that everybody needs to see,” Goldberg says. “Or feel. It’s more about the...
Destination unknown
When Ivan Locke left work, he had a family, a wife, a home, a job and a claim in one of Europe’s future skyscrapers. By the time he reaches his destination, he will have lost it all. To borrow Tolstoy’s opening line from Anna Karenina, “Happy commuters are all alike...
Emancipation examination
A humble suggestion: Force the chittering, self-serving partisans in Washington who increasingly prefer filibusters over floor votes to watch Lincoln. Director Steven Spielberg’s latest provides a character sketch, not of its titular president, but of America’s ...
Leni Riefen-stalling
On the one hand, any film subtitled “Part 1” is a naked cash grab. On the other hand, shut up and take my money, Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1...
2020 in movies
2020 was the year I watched more but understood less. With a rotating series of crises to consider, rare were the instances where I...
‘The world’s biggest student film’
It was 1983 when British filmmaker Alex Cox turned in his first feature film to Universal Studios. That same week, Cox optioned the rights to one of his favorite science-fiction novels for a future project. The movie was Repo Man. The book was Harry Harrison’s Bill, ...
The birth of the last lion
May 1940: Hitler is riding roughshod across Europe, gobbling up territory like an insatiable monster. Norway, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Denmark have all fallen. Belgium,...
Through the looking glass
Lewis Carroll’s immortal story Alice in Wonderland has been brought to the big screen many times, notably 1951’s animated Disney classic. That’s an intimidating challenge, especially for Tim Burton, who generally tackles new stories that can be crafted in his own ...
