Editorial Board Member, Cineaste Magazine.
Member, Drama Desk.
Rankings
* Bomb
** Of interest
*** Good
**** Excellent
***** Masterpiece
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllPinned reviews
More-
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 2022
Fifteen years after SPIDER-MAN 3 Sam Raimi returns to a much different Marvel universe, and maybe there are enough of his antic horror touches (PG-13 of course) to make it worth a visit for fans (and a delightful final bit to boot). But those unfamiliar with Strange and poor, tormented Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) may want to brush up via Wiki, and the scary ARMY OF DARKNESS-type moments involving eyes, zombies and mirrors, etc. are just garnishing over another hectic, enervating…
-
The Northman 2022
Working on a broad mythological canvas director and cowriter Robert Eggers has come up with some astonishing sequences and images, tethered to an insubstantial and predictable plot suggested by HAMLET; what's missing is his way with words, which distinguished THE WITCH (15) and THE LIGHTHOUSE (19). Here the actors, clad in furs and pelts and beaded seashells and other Norse accoutrement, hiss and snarl and growl vengeance at each other for more than two hours, which may very well be…
Recent reviews
More-
-
Roadgames 1981
After decades of scarcity I somehow wound up with three (!) Blu-rays of this--the Region B-locked Indicator seems to have the most comprehensive supplements (the informative 80-page booklet may be all you need) and an excellent transfer, the first time I've seen it in its proper aspect ratio. And I watched it lots of time on cable. The artwork is misleading; something like this does happen early on in the film but it's not that salacious, and the violence and…
Popular reviews
More-
Saint Jack 1979
A cable favorite in my teens, finally available in a good quality DVD, anamorphically enhanced at last. (Why no Blu-ray?) Its frank, febrile atmosphere is one of those things that got me to Asia, though Singapore was a disappointingly authoritarian place by the time I got there. There's nothing disappointing about the film, though, Bogdanovich's return to movies after a string of flops, a Paul Theroux adaptation made with a dummy script to fool the authorities into thinking it was…
-
Sands of the Kalahari 1965
Endfield's followup to the hit ZULU isn't the baboon horror movie I'd always thought; they're there, but until the coda mostly in the background, observing plane crash survivors go ape over the female (Susannah York) in their party and their dwindling prospects. The sexual politics are 1965, but all credit due the film for detailing them, as York passes from the loutish pilot (Nigel Davenport) to the brutish alpha male (Stuart Whitman) to an injured, initially diffident fellow passenger (Stanley…
