The title card that opens writer-director Eugene Ashe’s Sylvie’s Love (now streaming on Amazon) informs us that we’re in New York City, in 1962. That announcement quickly becomes superfluous, however — as soon as you hear Nancy Wilson’s version of “The Nearness of You” over vintage yellow cabs whizzing by …
Read More »Joe Biden Calls Lindsey Graham a 'Disappointment,' Talks Working With Republicans on 'Colbert'
President-elect Joe Biden and his wife Dr. Jill Biden joined Stephen Colbert for an extensive interview on The Late Show Thursday, December 17th. The interview began with a one-on-one with the president-elect, in which Biden spoke about his hopes for unity and said he understood that many Republicans were currently …
Read More »'Let Them All Talk': Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, and Dianne Wiest Stuck on a Boat — What Could Go Wrong?
Money talks — loudly enough that it could just as well be the fourth wheel to the troubled trio at the center of Let Them Talk, the new Steven Soderbergh movie, which is currently streaming on HBO Max. The movie’s got a solid premise. Three former college friends — Alice …
Read More »'Punk Saved Him': Julien Temple on His Shane MacGowan Doc 'Crock of Gold'
Julien Temple had never considered making a documentary about Shane MacGowan, the sensational, shambolic former Pogues frontman, until MacGowan himself asked him to do it. The pair had met in the mid-Seventies when MacGowan was just another punk pogoing at the Sex Pistols’ early shows, and they have remained friendly …
Read More »'Zappa' Review: A Modernist Mozart Who Happened to Be a Rock Star
There is no such thing as a casual Frank Zappa fan — it’s an all-or-nothing proposition. (Really, there’s no such thing as a casual Frank Zappa listener, period: You either immediately recoil from his grandiose, often goofy odes to dancin’ fools and yellow snow, self-promoting pimps and and S&M aficionados …
Read More »'Collective': A Tragedy, a Cover-Up, an Expose — and the Best Documentary of the Year
It’s like a scene out of a nightmare: A singer is howling onstage as his band thrashes behind him. When the number is done, he notices something is on fire. That’s not part of the show, he says. The camera whips around, as if the person holding it is trying …
Read More »'Freaky' Review: You Got Your Body-Switcheroo Comedy in My Slasher Flick!
They call him the Blissfield Butcher, a serial killer who terrorizes students every year around homecoming time. The annual high school event is a big deal in this small town, and the type of ghost-story fodder that kids use to scare one another with around campfires and late-night keggers. As …
Read More »Watch the 'Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time' Teaser, a Doc Nearly 40 Years in the Making
Nearly 40 years after Robert B. Weide wrote a letter to Kurt Vonnegut asking for permission to make a documentary, Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time will finally see its release in summer 2021. Co-directed by Don Argott, the film captures two decades of footage shot between 1988 and 2007, when …
Read More »Sean Connery: The Craggy Charisma of the Last Real Movie Star
Let’s raise a farewell glass to one of the all-time greats, Sean Connery. Even though the legendary Scottish actor turned 90 this summer, his death still feels like a shock, just because Connery seemed like he’d stick around forever — a giant oak towering over other stars, showing them up …
Read More »Trailers of the Week: 'The Crown,' 'Saved by the Bell,' 'Zappa,' and More
The Crown, Season Four As the new season nears, we get deeper glimpses into the new forces entering Queen Elizabeth’s life: Margaret Thatcher (Gillian Anderson) and Diana Spencer (Emma Corrin). We see Queen Elizabeth (Olivia Colman) give Thatcher a warning as to not make enemies out of “left, right and …
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