(CHECK OUT my full review in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette) Growing up as a kid and a baseball lover in the 1980s, it was hard not to know the name Nolan Ryan. That’s especially true for a young fan of the Texas Rangers, the team where the first ballot Hall of Fame pitcher spent his final … Continue reading
First Glance: “The Forgiven”
“The Forgiven” is the latest movie from writer-director John Michael McDonagh, the filmmaker behind 2014’s stellar “Calvary”. Here he leads an electric cast featuring Ralph Fiennes and recent Oscar winner Jessica Chastain. The film also stars Matt Smith, Caleb Landry Jones, Saïd Taghmaoui, Christopher Abbott, and Ismael Kanatar. “The Forgiven” premiered last September at the … Continue reading
REVIEW: “Senior Year” (2022)
In the new Netflix teen-ish comedy “Senior Year”, a cheerleading accident leaves a high school senior in a coma. After she wakes up 20 years later, she sets out to finish her high school dream of being named prom queen. Sounds utterly ridiculous, right? Well, it pretty much is. And while first-time feature film director … Continue reading
RETRO REVIEW: “Con Air” (1997)
There was a time when Jerry Bruckheimer was to action movies what Jason Blum currently is to horror. Obviously it’s not a true one-for-one comparison as both producers had very different approaches to the kind of movies they made. But their names did become synonymous with specific genres and both had loads of success giving … Continue reading
REVIEW: “Firestarter” (2022)
One of the first “grownup” novels I recall reading was Stephen King’s “Firestarter”. It first published in September 1980, but my exposure to it came a few years later. I’m guessing it was around the time of the 1984 movie adaptation starring Drew Barrymore. I was just a kid and remember finding a tattered paperback … Continue reading
REVIEW: “The Innocents” (2022)
CLICK HERE for my full review in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Fresh off his Best Screenplay Oscar nomination for “The Worst Person in the World”, Norwegian filmmaker Eskil Vogt goes in a much different direction with his new movie “The Innocents”. This subtle yet relentlessly eerie supernatural thriller first premiered at Cannes in 2021. Now it’s … Continue reading