A young man walks into a police station. Either unable or unwilling to speak, he non-verbally asks for something with which to write. Given a pen and a piece of paper, he scribbles down and displays the following: “I am Donovan Reid”. So begins Donovan Reid, a film co-written and directed by former Petaluman Austin…
I’ve been covering the San Francisco International Film Festival for over ten years now, so long that it’s changed its name. Now it’s known as the SFFILM Festival and it’s running now through April 23 at a variety of venues in the Bay Area. My day began with a “check-in” at the Festival Lounge. This…
An eerie sense of discomfort and anxiety begins to arise roughly halfway through the remarkable, entertaining, gripping, and disturbing new documentary ‘Three Identical Strangers.’ Once it starts, it only builds, continuing till long after the credits roll. Directed by Tim Wardle (“One Killer Punch”), this surprise hit (from CNN Films and England’s Channel 4) related…
The first dinosaur movie I ever remember seeing was Irwin Allen’s ‘The Lost World.’ I was five-years-old when I saw it at the Grove Theater in downtown Upland, in Southern California. From watching that film – about an expedition to a remote jungle where dinosaurs still exist – I learned a number of things. I…
I’ve been covering the San Francisco International Film Festival for ten years now for another web site. I’ve screened, reviewed and discussed well over one hundred films – some great, some good, and some real clunkers – and conducted numerous interviews over those ten years. This year’s festival, the 61st, runs April 4 through April…
“The Nice Guys,” writer-director Shane Black’s darkly entertaining R-rated homage to action movies of the 1970s, is not particularly nice. But it’s a whole lot nicer than many of the films that inspired it. Low-rent L.A. private eye Holland March (Ryan Gosling, displaying admirable physical comedy chops) is a drunk and a screw-up, but he…
Few filmmaking tricks are harder to pull off than that of fusing honest, political outrage with solid, crowd-pleasing entertainment. Whenever significant political questions are tucked into a mainstream movie – as in the recent “Avengers” and Captain America films – they are usually so dumbed down and simplified they are unlikely to cause anyone to…
It is pointless to argue whether or not Disney’s “Live Action” version of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Jungle Book‘ is a good movie or not. It is. It engages its audience from the first images of young Mowgli swinging through the jungle, pursued by some unseen danger. The combination of nostalgic connection to the beloved 1969…
Three people are trapped in a bunker underground after what may, or may not, be a massive nuclear or chemical attack on America. Unless, of course, it’s an alien invasion. Or an attack by giant monster like the one in ‘Cloverfield,’ the genetically related predecessor to ’10 Cloverfield Lane,’ which was filmed in relative secret…
“I bet Jane Austen is spinning in her grave right now,” I overheard a matronly woman gleefully stating to a bored box office attendant, just seconds after purchasing a ticket for ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.’ The kid behind the counter, slightly startled to have been addressed in such a conversational tone (and by someone so OLD), merely shrugged,…
