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Note: toward the end there is a spoiler. Too often the third film of a franchise is a disappointment, but in this prequel to the two “Quiet Place” films, this is not the case. The director of the quirky Nicolas Cage film Pig, Michael Sarnoski directs and is one of three scriptwriters (along with …
After a few minutes of watching Boaz Yakin’s film set in a Brooklyn ghetto I was thinking of John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood. Both films, loaded with “F bombs and “m-f”s provide a portal for white viewers to enter the red-lined world that white racism has created. And both feature a strong divorced father …
This is the second film in which director/writer Julio Quintana chronicles the struggles of a group of Latinos—and Dennis Quaid was also in Quintana’s Blue Miracle. The new film is based on Humberto G. Garcia’s 2010 non-fiction book Mustang Miracle that celebrates an all Latino high school golf team that was the first such team …
The people who made this early film about the KKK water down its attack, as we will see, with the script barely mentioning racism. It is distinguished mainly because it features three stars who seldom appeared in a film purportedly dealing seriously with social issues. Ginger Rogers, Doris Day, and Ronald Reagan were better known …
Just as Bayard Rustin was a neglected Civil Rights leader until Netflix presented Rustin, so has US Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm been relegated to the sidelines since her death in 2005. Netflix again steps up to acquaint us with this ground-breaking Black woman, as does actress Regina King as the film’s subject. Writer-director John Ridley, instead …
First-time director Daina O. Pusic serves up an adult fairytale about Death. There have been many such myths or fairy tales with the Grim Reaper taking many forms, but none as strange as in this film in which Death is a macaw bird able to talk and to change size. Its purpose is to end …
Kevin Costner’s new foray into the Western genre is certainly on an epic scale—growing from originally one movie to a projected series of four—but Chapter 1 is far too confusing because of its many characters and the shifting lines of its four plots. (I wish he could redo it as a cable series.) The one …
Continue reading “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (2024)”
Live theater can bring healing to the sorrowful, screenwriter Kelly O’Sullivan and co-director (and partner) Alex Thompson seem to be suggesting in this powerful drama. Who would have thought that a group rehearsing Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet would have such a profound effect upon a grieving man not even familiar with the play? Dan Mueller …
It is a delight to come across another film with an elderly person as the main character, showing that life does not end at 80. Inspired by a real-life Thelma who is now 103, director Josh Margolin’s movie Thelma is centered on a 93-year-old that gives actress June Squibb a chance to shine. It is …
The Psalmist could be describing the Nazis in director/co-writer Peter Thorwarth’s bloody movie set at the end of WW 2. Lt. Colonel Von Starnfeld (Alexander Scheer) and his underling Dorfler (Florian Schmidtke) have run down a deserter, Pvt. Heinrich (Robert Masser) and are preparing to hang him. To prolong his angony the sadistic Dorfler arranges …