Festival season is in full swing, even with fests either going hybrid or one-hundred percent virtual as the pandemic continues. Here are some films I was able to catch at this year’s Garden State Film Festival, Santa Barbara Film Festival, as well as another interesting film that will be available on demand soon—hopefully along with these other ones. “The Knot” (SBIFF) is an intriguing work from filmmaker Ashish Pant, an unusual work that can’t precisely be

Michelle Pfeiffer can do almost no wrong on screen, in my view, and I’m going to declare that it’s not her fault that the new film “French Exit” suffers from overambition and a trace of boredom despite her still-electrifying presence.

Not that she doesn’t lean into the role of Frances Price with considerable verve. A lifelong New York socialite, Frances is devastated to learn that her late husband has left her with little

Growing up in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., Matthew Jensen knew his destiny was to work in films. As a young man, he took the Metro into the heart of democracy to watch and study films at the Smithsonian. He also cruised the pages of the Washington Post, seeking out revivals at theaters in Georgetown and word of AFI screenings at the Kennedy Center.

If you’ve never heard about the exploits of the British Cold War spy Greville Maynard Wynne, you’re not alone.  Even Dominic Cooke, the director of the new fact-based film about Wynne’s spy exploits, had never heard of Wynne before the script for “The Courier” came his way.

“It was interesting that Brits over a certain age knew who he was, but anyone below the age of sixty-five could not recall the case

Anthony Hopkins gives the performance of a lifetime in “The Father,” which is saying something for a man who has been acting professionally for more than a half-century, and who already has one Oscar to his credit.  Hopkins is 83, at the top of his game, and also of the right age to infuse his character in the new film with the most assuredly correct amount of pathos and humanity, and elicit our sympathies.  It’s an absolute masterpiece

Everyone’s favorite resident of a certain deep-sea pineapple is back in his first big-screen adventure since the untimely passing of SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg, who succumbed to ALS in 2018. Hillenburg’s absence is felt rather keenly in “Sponge on the Run,” which was written and directed by frequent “Bob” scribe Tim Hill, as a certain magic is absent in our yellow friend’s third big-screen adventure—bowing not in theaters

Ella Blumenthal was a young woman when the Nazis invaded her native Poland. Over the next few years she was bounced around Europe by Hitler’s forces, experiencing firs-thand the horrors of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. She even participated in the failed Warsaw Uprising in 1943, to which the Nazis responded with a horrific crackdown that would all but level the ancient city. Blumenthal and her niece, Roma