Review: Restive political offspring find romance in ‘Red, White & Royal Blue,’ the movie

Film · Reviews
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Anyone who read Casey McQuiston’s best-selling 2019 novel, Red, White & Royal Blue, or who continues to be thoroughly demoralized by all-things-MAGA, will be thrilled to stream this rom-com/ alternate-reality/LGBTQ fantasy-fairy-tale produced by Amazon Studios and directed by Matthew Lopez (the acclaimed playwright of The Inheritance). The story imagines a world in which the son ...

Beyond Barbenheimer: small & good summer Euro-movies

Film
Hey guys, there’s more to movie life than the bizarre blockbuster hits of summer 2023, BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER. There are at least two small, artful European films worthy of your popcorn budget. A movie about a verrrry messy love triangle, set in Paris, tells the tale of a German film director Tomas (Franz Rogowski), who ...

REVIEW: ‘Rise’: dance film earnestly misses its pointe

Dance · Film · Reviews
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The French film En Corps, curiously translated as Rise and presented by Blue Fox Entertainment, is a well-made, earnest, and thoroughly innocuous movie. It will interest anyone who watched Natalie Portman in Black Swan and railed to the heavens, “Why didn’t they cast a real dancer in the role!?” This new film will more than ...

For the kid in you! Saturdays with Max Fleischer cartoons at The Panorama

Film
The great Polish-American animator Max Fleischer (1883-1972) and his production studios created iconic animations with characters like Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, Felix the Cat, Popeye the Sailorman, Superman and more. In 1926, Fleischer released the first cartoon with synchronized sound, My Old Kentucky Home. His love of jazz led to cartoons (live action & ...

Through the doors of Abbey Road Studios — at The Wallis

Film · Music
Remember the famous shot …? Taken a few seconds after this one? The crosswalk photo of the Beatles crossing in London’s St John’s Wood before their recording session at Abbey Road Studios, in which the image of a barefooted Paul McCartney spawned a crazed conspiracy theory that Paul was dead? And that John Lennon’s subterfuging ...

Movie-viewing happiness @ The Montalbán

Film
When I like something, I like it. And, lately, I like the summer movie-viewing series high atop the venerable Ricardo Montalbán Theatre, aka The Montalbán, located dead center of Hollywood, on Vine Street just south of Hollywood Boulevard. The above image of director Quentin Tarantino’s single-card credit for his kick-butt KILL BILL, VOL II (2004), ...

Up on the roof: summer movies at The Montalbán

Film
It’s a fun and cool thing to do. It’s Rooftop Movies at The Montalbán where a summer screening series kicked off the other night with The Greatest Showman, the Hugh Jackman/Michelle Williams movie-musical we had never seen. We had a ball. You can have one too. It goes like this. Find your way to the vaunted ...

How to blow up a pipeline – and blow your mind

Film · Reviews
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What end justifies the means? If the end is radical environmental change and the survival of our planet, can violence be justified? In actions against private property, what if life is lost? How To Blow Up a Pipeline, the new eco-political film from Neon, directed and co-written by Daniel Goldhaber (whose last film was the ...

A sculptor’s inner life: Michelle Williams in Kelly Reichardt’s ‘Showing Up’ 2

Film · Reviews
I was entranced by the generically titled, but otherwise awfully good example of ‘slow cinema,’ Showing Up, directed by down-to-earth filmmaker Kelly Reichardt. This movie, opening April 7, is made by a woman artist; it concerns a woman artist, who is played by Michelle Williams, one of the foremost actresses of our time, in her ...

Charming ‘Moving On’ cast has celebratory premiere-party

Film · Reviews
the great lily tomlin The new comedy from Roadside Attractions, produced, written, and directed by Paul Weitz (About a Boy; executive producer of Pinocchio) concerns Claire (Jane Fonda) and Evelyn (Lily Tomlin), two estranged friends who meet at the funeral of a third. The two ladies cart decades of baggage — and its not by ...