Film Review: "Supernova"

by Christopher James

Who wouldn’t want to see Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth in love?

The suave former Mr. Darcy would make the perfect husband for a cocktail-swirling Tucci. On paper, any movie starring these two men as lovers would be a real winner. Even though they are both straight, they've eached proven that they can realistically and empathetically play gay without leaning on stereotypes. Plus, Stanley Tucci's cookbooks (and the accompanying photo shoot) have done more for the gay community than any other straight moviestar ally. Yet, Supernova is a far cry from any delightful rom-com or charming late-in-life love story. Writer/director Harry Macqueen’s film is a much more serious and somber affair.

While both Tucci and Firth are in fine form, Supernova is more of a slog than an engrossing drama...

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Sundance: "Strawberry Mansion" review

by Jason Adams

"Out of my hair and into my home, to enter you must lick the ice cream cone," is how one character greets another in the trippy and lovingly strange Strawberry Mansion from writer-directors Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney. That invitation gives y'all your gist -- if you wanna enter a movie that will bestow such a whimsical greeting upon you at the door then you're probably in the right place. And it only gets weirder once you've come in. It's up to you whether you're willing to let the Strawberry wash over you. Me, I was mostly tickled. Pinkish, you know...

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Sundance: Rita Moreno in the Spotlight

By Abe Friedtanzer 

In a week where we’ve lost both Cicely Tyson and Cloris Leachman, it feels like the right time to celebrate trailblazing actresses who are still earning awards love well into their eighties and nineties. On tap at Sundance in the U.S. Documentary Competition section is Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It. This exploration of her life and the profound influence she has had on so many is a rich, endearing journey that constitutes a truly delightful and energizing look at a remarkable actress who just last week earned her fourth consecutive Critics Choice nomination at the age of eighty-nine.

This film should work equally well for those intimately familiar with much of Moreno’s resumé as well as those who know her only from her signature film role that won her an Oscar, 1961’s West Side Story, or from the great TV work she’s still doing on the recently-wrapped One Day at a Time...

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Review: The Little Things

by Matt St Clair

A movie like The Little Things probably would’ve done very well in the 90’s. A time when crime thrillers such as Se7en, and another Denzel Washington starrer The Pelican Brief, could thrive financially and when actors rather than superheroes were bonafide box office draws. Given how Denzel is one of the few A-listers left who can open a movie on his name alone, The Little Things might've made a decent profit in a pre-COVID world. Yet, given the film’s poor and dated quality, it would’ve been best to let it live in the past.

Once Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) teams with LA detective Jim Baxter (Rami Malek) to help him solve a string of serial killings...

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Sundance: "Human Factors" review

by Jason Adams

How weird are those first moments when we realize our parents are people? Not super-humans, not saints, not actually the best baker of cakes or baseball player in the world — when the freckles on their fingers come into focus; the scabs and flabby knees. Mom stares at the wall for too long; Dad knee shakes when he’s trapped in thought. This disillusionment of experience, of aging, rides hand in hand with the becoming of our own selves — their armor dissolves down in order to make us stand stronger, separate.

There is an inciting incident at the near-start of Ronny Trocker’s strategically incisive Human Factors that seems to set the white upper-middle-class family unit at its center spinning of their axis...

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