Stallznow, an Australian living in the U.S., has a linguistics PhD and a background in history and anthropology. She treats odd-sounding beliefs with respect but doesn’t hesitate to condemn — quite rightly, I’d say — groups that exploit or mistreat … Continue reading
I found myself initially a bit confused about who was who in this film, but I liked it enough that I watched it twice and enjoyed it more the second time. It’s based on a lightweight Oscar Wilde play and … Continue reading
The late Elmore Leonard wrote crime novels noted for their realistic dialog and interesting characters. This omnibus edition from The Library of America contains, as the volume’s title says, four novels from the 1970s, all fairly typical of Leonard’s work, … Continue reading
This was a Netflix find that proved to be not awful. Jonathan Silverman (mainly known for comedies such as Weekend at Bernie’s) works in the personnel department of an energy company headed by Martin Landau. He has a crush on … Continue reading
In the not-too-distant future Earth has been invaded by aliens called “mimics,” which is odd, because they don’t actually seem to mimic anything. In fact, they’re pretty original as aliens go, most of them looking like about a hundred flailing, … Continue reading
Circa 1987 Nicolas Cage said goodbye to his tearful girlfriend Téa Leoni to fly to London for a job with Barclay’s Bank, reassuring her he’d be back. Thirteen years later he’s a rich Wall Street executive who never saw her … Continue reading
Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine (Logan to his friends) may be the most popular character in the X-Men movies, so it’s not surprising that he would get a couple of solo films. The first, set mainly in the 1970s I think, tells … Continue reading
This is old-school science fiction set in a huge underground “silo,” a vertical city where a remnant of humanity takes shelter from a deadly surface environment, their only view of the outside coming from a set of live camera images … Continue reading
As one expects from a comic book movie, most of this one is ridiculously over-the-top action, but there’s more to it than that, notably an underlying theme of the trade-offs between freedom and order. It doesn’t have anything too subtle … Continue reading
In this computer animated fantasy adventure a girl in her mid-teens whose mother has just died goes to live with her father in a rambling old country house somewhere in a northeastern U.S. forest. Her parents had apparently split up … Continue reading