Summer is for hanging from helicopters. It’s also for movies. Our critic’s preview for May/June ’25.
While it may not hit the heights of “Barbenheimer,” summer movie season 2025 promises to be a big one. Officially, it all kicks off Memorial Day weekend with Tom Cruise in the final chapter of Mission Impossible. Unofficially, it has already started. That was on the April 4 release of Minecraft and its $1 billion ...
Overwhelming! Two mega-movies, HEAT & RHAPSODY IN BLUE, light up TCM Fest 2025 1
director michael mann, actor al pacino, ben mank in conversation prior to screening of HEAT (1995) at tcl chinese theater part of tcm fest 2025, april 27, 2025 There’s something lacking in the much-bantered trope, “You have to see it on the big screen.” And yet, those very words motivate film fans from across the ...
British Film Institute brings impressive wares to TCM Fest 2025
Ben Roberts, Chief Executive of the British Film Institute, attends 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival. photo: Jesse Grant/Getty Images for TCM One of the highlights of this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival was a tribute to the British Film Institute’s remarkable preservation program, now celebrating its 90th year. The tribute included 6 movies, all presented ...
My TCM Fest: critic’s choices for Friday April 25, 2025 1
Apr
21
2025
Well, it’s that time again. It’s time for cinephiles from across the country to converge on Hollywood Boulevard in the stretch between our three mighty houses of cinema, respectively, the Chinese, the El Capitain, and the Egyptian Theatres, and bask in the rich movie programming offered in TCM Classic Film Festival. The Festival, in its ...
Baby-boomer must-see: ‘One to One, John & Yoko’
This poster may only serve to reignite the unsubsiding loathing for Yoko Ono but the documentary, which had musical oversight by the couple’s son Sean, actually counters that view. It reveals an amazingly beautiful relationship between an unlikely pairing, two artists. I recommend it highly. I couldn’t even move from my seat for a good ...
Into the woods, with French movie-thriller ‘Misericordia’
It’s no news to anyone — we’ve known it since “Hansel & Gretel.” Bad things happen in the woods. To prove that that essential truth has gone unchanged since the days of Grimm’s fairy-tales, the woods are the chosen terrain in which auteur Alain Guiraudie stages the central plot turn of his latest movie, Misericordia ...
Road trip with Neil Young, April 17, via new doc ‘Coastal’
February 9, 2025: Neil Young performs for victims of Altadena fire at Pasadena Red Cross shelter He’s so interesting — and so worth it. He’s truly an artist of our collective lifetime. I saw him in concert in the summer of 2023 at the Greek Theatre. His show was a fascinating melange of devoted musicianship ...
In month of March, ‘A Week of French Language Cinema’!
Mar
11
2025
We all have to find our bliss anymore, don’t we. For me, it’s watching motion pictures to the sound of “la belle langue.” It’s the dulcet tone of francais in your ears — if only for a few hours. A Week of French Language Cinema, an annual West Los Angeles event of francophonia + cinemaphilia, ...
Film review: THE SUBSTANCE, a triumph of the insubstantial
Ed note: This review, written in August 2024, is belatedly published, thus the wishful reference to a woman president in its last paragraph. The director is French, which I found surprising. And she cannot be called young. That was my second shock, for, in watching her movie, THE SUBSTANCE, I would have sworn it was ...
BEST IN SHOW: A tour of Oscar-nominated international movies of 2024
Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here Each year it’s the best of world cinema, delivered to your doorstep. The competition for Best International Feature Film is my personal favorite part of awards season, and the crop of films released in 2024 did not disappoint. Depending on your tastes and preferences, any of the five movies up ...