Ever hear of Ellis B. Haizlip? I hadn't. Now I'll never forget him. MR SOUL! an award-winning documentary about the first Black nighttime TV talk show host in America, Ellis Haizlip, who went on the air during the turbulent late 60's with a show called SOUL! is a revelation and documents a revolution! [...]
Slim pickins at the movies thus far this season, but here's my take on two films just released beginning with one based on a young adult novel by Julia Walton: WORDS ON BATHROOM WALLS. I thought this was going to be just another doomed teen romance, of little interest to me given how [...]
"Power" was the theme at the movies released this rainy weekend and the following two films though different in style and content, found their way through the same terrain. Let's begin with PROJECT POWER: PROJECT POWER is the latest from Jamie Foxx who stars in this sci-fi action thriller about power-- who has [...]
This weekend is a mixed bag and involves Mick Jagger and William Shakespeare. If only they had worked together. I couldn't wait to see the THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY a Sony Classics release beginning August 7 at West Newton Theater. For this movie critic/arts reporter, what could be better than an art heist film starring [...]
These two films couldn't be more different and I liked them both-- one in spite of its being outright awful and ridiculous, the other because it pretty much accomplished what it set out to do. THE SECRET: DARE TO DREAM stars Katie Holmes as a down-on-her-luck widow named Miranda raising three kids when [...]
THIS WEEKEND YOU MUST WATCH one of the most inspiring films I've ever seen, and one that speaks directly to this moment: A MOST BEAUTIFUL THING. This profoundly uplifting documentary by award-winning director and Olympic rower Mary Mazzio, absolutely lives up to its title. The film tells the true story of a group [...]
Toxic and intoxicating: two films to consider this midsummer weekend! RADIOACTIVE: Beware its unstable script and the resulting half life it sketches of one of the world's great scientists and the first woman ever to win the Nobel Prize. Rosamund Pike stars as Marie Curie, the pioneering scientist who along with her husband [...]
You are in luck-- a fresh, exhilarating new film opens on YOUR screens this weekend: WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES. A buzzy hit at Sundance last year, it's the debut feature film by writer/director Makoto Nagahisa and sparkles with inventiveness and style, humor and wisdom, humanity and digital dazzle. It's a fizzy mashup of retro video [...]
Who said you can't put theater on TV? The Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning musical HAMILTON has made the quantum leap from stage to screen and the result is a stunning, exhilarating, technical and artistic triumph. The musical's power, brilliance, and relevance has been cinematically galvanized for a country again on the brink of revolution. [...]
Jon Stewart who left his groundbreaking TV show THE DAILY SHOW 5 years ago to Trevor Noah, is back again in a larger format, but his sights are still laser-focused on the lunacy of the broken system in which we're trapped. A cross between a movie and a very long joke, IRRESISTIBLE has a punchline [...]
