Rita Moreno is, of course, a national treasure.
Every time I’ve ever seen her interviewed she is always so funny and such a raconteur, when I heard that they had made a documentary about her I was like, “Well, I certainly am going to see this!”
It does not disappoint.
However, she is not holding back on the difficulty…
Read MoreOne of the most rewarding experiences when watching a film is encountering an entirely unexpected performance. For all of the obvious reasons, most audience members go into a movie knowing who’s going to carry the lead roles. Such that, it’s not generally a surprise that a movie starring someone like Isabelle Huppert or Michael Caine, for example, is going to feature, at the very minimum, an engaging lead actor. (Fill in the blanks based on your own tastes and preference, of course. Maybe you’re a massive Jake Busey fan. I don’t know.) Of course, getting the very thing that you expect feels satisfying. That’s undeniable. But what happens when an actor appears in the role of a tertiary character
Read More“He was just some Joseph looking for a manger.” Those are the lyrics from Leonard Cohen’s melancholy song The Stranger Song, which sets up the equally melancholy masterpiece from Robert Altman McCabe & Mrs. Miller, because every character is looking for a place to call home.
The film that’s referred to as an anti-western is…
Read More“We had to assert our dignity in small ways. That’s why these napkins are beautiful. That’s why my mother’s gloves were beautiful. Little details that tell the world we are not invisible.”
I have been waiting for this movie for so long, and I had no intention of watching it on HBO Max, movies are back in the theatres, and that’s where I’m seeing them! So off to the AMC 16 we went.
Could it live up to the hype? Could it be as good as…
Read MoreFor 70 years, Mexico was ruled by The Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) or PRI, a center-right party known for corruption and repression. With a government that had little to no interest in putting a stop to the drug trade, the cartels flourished. In the year 2000, Vicente Fox was elected president, representing The National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional) or PAN, a right-wing party rejecting a fundamental adherence to left- or right-wing policies. However, it was Felipe Calderón, also from the PAN Party, who kicked off the drug war when elected in 2006. He dispatched 6,500 Mexican Army soldiers…
Read More“The ray that destroyed the space station and knocked us off our course may have originated right here!”
“Oh come off it, how can a bunch of women invent a gizmo like that?”
“Sure, and even if they invented it, how could they aim it? You know how women drivers are!”
In the far off future of 1985…
Read MoreBeing a wife is some heavy sh*t. I in fact was raised to be a wife, an upper-middle class American Jewish wife, to be precise. Obviously this education proved a massive failure, but impressive and ongoing campaigns on the level of Hannibal's pachyderm army were employed…
For Memorial Day, I thought I would talk about the most Memorial Day kind of movie there is, as it’s about war and dying in battle, but it’s not sad or depressing. Production started on September 2, 1945, the exact day that the war ended, and is a tribute to all of the people who lost their lives in that terrible conflict, while also being about a man who refuses to accept his fate…
Read MoreGather round, children, and I will tell you a tale.
Back in the olden days, there was no streaming, no DVRs, no DVDs, no VCRs, no Roku, no cable channels beyond Z Channel, which was a local to LA premium cable channel before the term existed, and it didn’t matter anyway, because we didn’t have it at my house. There were just the broadcast stations ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and the local stations KTLA, KTTV, KCAL, and KCOP…
Read MoreJosh and Benny Safdie have been making low budget films in New York for over ten years, mostly in and around Queens and Manhattan. They’ve been known to just use random people on the streets as their actors. In 2014, they released a movie based on a book written by Arielle Holmes, about her real life as a homeless heroin addict entitled Heaven Knows What. They cast Arielle herself to play the lead. It’s a fantastic film this critic highly recommends, however this piece…
Read MoreI was looking for something to watch, and nothing was really popping for me, so I went over to Prime and what right on the first page was Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles, because I recently put it on my watchlist when I was reminded that I had planned on seeing it in 2019 and then completely forgot about it! So, perfect timing.
For me, Fiddler on the Roof is Zero Mostel. I even saw him play Tevye…
Read MoreIt was sometime in the mid to late 90’s when Martin McDonagh was riding a bus through America. It was somewhere in the southern states where a specific billboard caught his eye. It described a gruesome death, and called out police for not doing anything. “The sign flashed by…
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