Review: Gemma & Gugu in "Summerland"

by Juan Carlos

Jessica Swale’s Summerland introduces us to Alice, an old writer living in the countryside during the 1970s. We watch her drive away children who are playing petty pranks on her. While it may seem random, the film utilizes this moment to inform us of her instinctive response to children which will interfere with the story to unfold.

Cut to the 1940s: in the same town, people are wary of the looming terror of the war. A young Alice (Gemma Arterton), then a recluse, is given the news that she is required to take in a young boy named Frank from London as the perils of the war continue to escalate in the capital. Meanwhile, she remembers a former lover (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) from the past...

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Review: The Tax Collector

by Tony Ruggio

I’m not certain I’ve ever seen a movie fall apart so much, so quickly, and so late as The Tax Collector. What begins as an intense, well-crafted, gangster picture -- almost a twisted buddy movie really -- eventually devolves into a poorly constructed revenge film.

The first half, at least, is chock-full of intriguing little details, and workday nuances that could’ve only been culled from real-life experience on the mean streets of East Los Angeles. David (Bobby Soto) is a mid-level collector for his imprisoned ringleader father (Jimmy Smits) and connected uncle (George Lopez). He’s a monied, family man in a wealthy enclave, running the day-to-day errands for their neck of the woods, which mostly involve collecting gang taxes from the neighborhood shops and shopkeepers. His enforcer Creeper, a well-dressed white man and friend he clearly grew up with, is played by a riveting Shia Labeouf...

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Review: Rosamund Pike in "Radioactive"

Please welcome new contributor Juan Carlos Ojano, who you may know from the podcast "One Inch Barrier" - Editor

by Juan Carlos Ojano

Biopics are tricky.  Inasmuch as making them are good bets for filmmakers to get awards consideration, they are also prone to falling to overused clichés. One overworn formula persistently plagues this genre: the all-encompassing chronicle of the major events in a real person’s life. Such is the case with Marjane Satrapi’s Radioactive, an unabashed ode to the legacy of Marie Curie and her contributions to science, that's now streaming on Amazon Prime.

While this biopic harbors a lot of distinct aesthetic choices, they are but distracting compensation for formulaic storytelling...

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Review: The Old Guard

by Lynn Lee

In my more fanciful moments, I have a pet theory that Charlize Theron is a reincarnated ancient goddess.  I’m not just talking about her statuesque beauty, effortless glamour, or seeming immunity to aging.  No, I mean her superhuman ability to batter, dirty up, strip down and sometimes strip away that beauty in service of a role…only to reemerge in the same state of impossible physical perfection as before, as if nothing had happened.

Who better, then, to play a female warrior who never dies or grows old and whose wounds heal without a trace?  While Theron’s played a lot of certifiable badasses in recent years, she hasn’t often been cast as a bona fide superhero, and the results have been mixed when she has (Aeon Flux is the last that comes to mind, unless you count Hancock).  I’m happy to report she finds a good fit with The Old Guard, Netflix’s latest attempt to make us all forget we ever needed to go to a movie theater...

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Review: "Hamilton"

by Eric Blume

Disney+ made a shrewd and smart move by releasing the filmed-stage movie musical Hamilton over the July 4 weekend, at a time when the country really needs it.  The themes and ideas of this Pulitzer Prize-winning theater phenomenon from five years ago seem even more relevant and powerful than they did upon arrival, and the movie version, which debuted this weekend, is a stage capture of the principal original Broadway cast, edited together from three live performances filmed in June 2016.  

Filmed versions of staged material always have their limitations:  one can never capture the visceral pump of energy that’s happening in the Richard Rodgers Theater before and during a performance of this show in particular.  As such, the Hamilton movie ultimately succeeds best in preserving an unbeatable group of actors in the biggest show of this century, exactly as the original creators intended it to play...

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