I recently had the opportunity to attend my first Sonoma International Film Festival. The festival, which celebrated its 25th year, ran for five days March 23 through March 27. More than 120 films were screened with more than 80 of them premiering at the festival. Films were screened at seven different venues, all within a…
Much has been written about the recently released Steven Spielberg/Tony Kushner version of West Side Story. While the reviews have been rapturous, its box office can be described as lukewarm at best, and the term “flop” has been bandied around by some. Its failure to find an audience (at least so far) has been attributed…
It’s been almost eight years since 13-year-old Andy Lopez was gunned down on a neighborhood sidewalk in Santa Rosa, CA by Sonoma County Sheriff’s Deputy Erick Gelhaus. Gelhaus, a 24-year veteran of the Sheriff’s office at the time (as well as a firearms instructor and Iraq war veteran,) apparently mistook the Airsoft gun Lopez was…
Military-themed movies don’t come more retro than Greyhound. The film stars Tom Hanks as the captain of a U.S. naval destroyer escorting a convoy of supply ships to WWII-torn England that comes under attack by a wolf-pack of Nazi submarines. Originally scheduled for a March 2019 theatrical release, Apple acquired the film from Sony Pictures…
So I’ve spent the last week trying to emulate all the cool kids by binge-watching a bunch of series I’ve been reading about but haven’t had the chance to stream. Here’s my short take on them all: Special – Netflix Give credit to creator/writer/star Ryan O’Connell for developing this series which is an autobiographically-based take…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one – a shy, nerdy high school senior secretly pines for the “popular” girl at his school and makes a fool of himself (well, he throws up on her) when he tries to talk to her. Ok, how about this one – a shy, nerdy high school senior tries…
I’ve been attending/covering the SFFILM Festival for another web site since 2009. I thoroughly enjoyed spending weekends in the city hopping from venue to venue to catch a variety of narrative, documentary, and short films from around the world. Well, THAT isn’t happening. Like everyone else, they’ve turned mostly to streaming. Here’s my look at…
Netflix’s Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal is an odd film. It’s part documentary, part docu-drama, and all absolutely infuriating. Director Chris Smith uses interviews and dramatic recreations to tell the story of the great College Admissions Scandal of 2019 in which elite members of the business, law, and entertainment communities (including residents of…
Soul is a beautiful film of incredible depth, more depth than we’ve become used to from animated films – even Pixar’s. Gorgeously animated, wonderfully voiced (with contributions from some recognizable Bay Area theatre talent), and vibrantly scored, I think it would have been the least financially successful Pixar film to date had it been released…
If you come to David Fincher’s Mank seeking a definitive answer to the question of who really wrote Citizen Kane you are likely to find yourself disappointed. The question, first raised by film critic Pauline Kael in a 1971 essay, has hung out there in the cinema atmosphere for decades. Kael’s conclusion that it was…
North Bay Stage and Screen 