‘Freaky Tales’ Flashes Back to Oakland 1987
Take some punk rock, some rap, the NBA playoffs and the story of a retired hitman played by Pedro Pascal, mix it all up into four intertwined stories– three based on actual facts – and you get Freaky Tales, an ode to the Bay Area city set in May of 1987. Fresh off their stint on Captain Marvel, along with several revered indie films including Half Nelson, it’s the latest from the writer-director team of Ryan Fleck and Anna...
The Twisted Tale of ‘Death of a Unicorn’
Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega as Elliot and Ridley Kintner make for an unusual father-daughter duo. You sense that immediately in the opening scenes of A24’s Death of a Unicorn, As they drive up a deserted mountainous road, there’s bickering and tension, and then inattention that shapes the rest of this rather lame horror-comedy tale. Suddenly, their car hits a horse-like animal on the road, which turns out to be a unicorn, and both have...
The Sweet Charm of ‘The Ballad of Wallis Island’
If you enjoyed The Banshees of Inisherin a couple years back, you’re probably going to love the new Focus Features film The Ballad of Wallis Island. Aside from the similarity in the cadence of the titles, both take place on a remote UK island and feature a fractured relationship, a lovable misfit and a movie star. In Banshees, it was Colin Farrell and in Wallis Island, it’s Carey Mulligan. But spoiler alert: there’s no donkey – and no...
It’s De Niro x 2 Notorious Mobsters in ‘The Alto Knights’
A mob boss would have a hit out for someone about this. Robert De Niro’s new gangster picture, The Alto Knights, bombed at the box office during its opening weekend. It pulled in just over $3 million domestically on a $45 million budget. The Warner Bros. film had the proper pedigree in spades. Nicholas Pileggi wrote the screenplay. It’s the latest in his list of acclaimed mob movie credits, starting with Goodfellas, for which he...
Shades of 007 in ‘Black Bag,’ Steven Soderbergh’s New Spy Thriller
Director Steven Soderbergh is teasing audiences with the casting of his new film, Black Bag. The spy thriller stars Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender as married intelligence agents George and Kathryn Woodhouse, alongside Regé-Jean Page, Pierce Brosnan and Naomie Harris. Brosnan is best known for his portrayal of James Bond in four films from 1995–2002, Harris played Eve Moneypenny in the Bond films Skyfall (2012),...
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