Entertainment
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Review: 'The Last Showgirl' or Meet Pamela Anderson.
We're all Team Pamela now; how could we not be? Pamela Anderson's story, with its sunny, sexy, dream-come-true beginning and its darkening, porn-come-true trajectory, could have been anybody's bumpy trip.
It hasn't all been awful, of course. Anderson was a little Canadian kid who came to the States, blossomed into a hot number in Playboy ...Read more
Review: 'Yacht Rock' or to Live and Play in LA.
What is yacht rock, anyway? Is it even rock and roll? In the new HBO documentary "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary," Mac DeMarco, a professional entertainer who you'd figure would know, says the genre "exists in a certain zone. It's not that it doesn't rock, but it doesn't rock too hard." Comic Fred Armisen, who wrote the intro for Greg Prato'...Read more
Review: 'Gladiator II' or Roma Confidential.
The year 2000 was a very good one for Ridley Scott. The director's neo-swords-and-sandals epic "Gladiator," released in May of that year, went on to gross some $451 million at the worldwide box office -- real money in those days. And when the next batch of Oscars was handed out, "Gladiator," nominated for 12 of them, took home five, including ...Read more
Review: In 'Heretic' Hugh Grant Goes Dark.
"Heretic" is a movie with a message. The message is: Don't get too chummy with smiley men in festive cardigans, especially if they have blueberry pie on their breath. And double-especially if they look like Hugh Grant. Or, worse, if they turn out to actually be Hugh Grant, which is the case here, right down to the crinkly Grant smile ...Read more
Review: 'The Fall' is a Magical Mystery Tour.
Here's some good news: "The Fall" is back. After an 18-year hibernation, director Tarsem Singh's glorious cult fantasy is being given a brief theatrical run (in a 4K restoration) and is also, for the first time, streaming, too (on MUBI). For anyone who's never seen the film, this is an opportunity worth seizing.
The lore surrounding "The Fall" ...Read more
Review: 'Venom: The Last Dance' Comes Not a Moment Too Soon
In the pantheon of notable big-screen comedy duos -- Laurel and Hardy, Olsen and Johnson, Martin and Lewis -- surely room can be found for Venom and Eddie. You know: Venom, the standup Symbiote from outer space, and Eddie Brock, his earthbound straight man. Both of these characters, each played by Tom Hardy, are reteamed in "Venom: The Last ...Read more
Review: 'Anora' is Mad Love.
"Anora" is a cool breeze of a movie that billows into a whirl of heart and soul and crazy foul-mouthed action. It's a classic screwball adventure set amid a group of bumbling lowlifes and the chattery strippers, shifty priests, teed-off Russian oligarchs and uncooperative candy store owners who vex them at every turn. There's also a zonked crime...Read more
Review: 'We Live in Time' - The Crying Game.
As most movie fans know, nothing supercharges a serious weepie like a fatal disease. Almost anything will do, as long as death is seen to be impending. In her 1868 novel "Little Women," Louisa May Alcott got considerable milage out of scarlet fever, which naturally spread to the book's several screen adaptations as well. Even a relatively ...Read more
Review: 'Joker: Folie a Deux' is a Long, Kind of Brilliant Slog
Here's a ballsy move. You're Todd Phillips, a commercially successful mainstream film director (all three "Hangover" movies), who's open to the outre (you started out with a freakin' GG Allin documentary). In 2019 you released a dark, gritty, midbudget supervillain movie and watched as -- to your utter astonishment -- it grossed north of $1 ...Read more
'Saturday Night': Comedy Central.
I wonder who the audience for this movie is supposed to be. Nostalgia-addled geezers who happened to tune in to NBC at 11:30 on the long-ago night of Oct. 11, 1975, for the debut of a new show called "Saturday Night" (soon to be "Saturday Night Live")? Since those moldering oldsters are no longer big moviegoers, perhaps it is hoped that a fit ...Read more
'The Substance': Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley in a Wild Body Horror Classic
I don't know about you, but I like my social-issue movies doled out with a squirt of prechewed feminist resentments and a barrel of blood and guts. And here we go. French writer-director Coralie Fargeat, making her first English-language feature, has taken the evergreen idiocies of the beauty-and-wellness industry and run them, along with ...Read more
'My Old Ass': Aubrey Plaza and Maisy Stella in an Otherworldly Teen Flick.
One of the things that elevates "My Old Ass" above the traditional run of Hollywood youth movies -- apart from its sparkling cast and sunny cinematography -- is the fresh particularity of its setting. We're in Canada, which is a nice change, in the woodsy lake country north of Toronto. And the kids we meet, while bright and spirited, are ...Read more