Seeing the trailer for the new film “The Big Ugly” could mislead the viewer into thinking they are in for just another straight-to-video action film cheapie starring Vinnie Jones, who made quite the post-Guy Ritchie films career out of this genre. This assessment would be massively incorrect. Writer/director Scott Wiper’s new film (co-written by Paul Tarantino) is a sharply focused southern thriller that emphasizes mood and character and features

I really enjoy David Ayer’s work. His screenplays can occasionally bring about intense and powerful portrayals of cops and street criminals.

When he hits, he hits hard such as with his screenplay for Ron Shelton’s excellent crooked cop drama “Dark Blue” starring Kurt Russell, and his sensational police drama “End of Watch” with Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena. I even found Ayer’s 2014

Every year, the American Legion program called Boys State brings in some of the best and brightest young men to experience simulated democracy first-hand.  They are divided into two different “parties,” and then must choose their leaders, give speeches, make deals and campaign over six intense days.  Its alumni include Bill Clinton, no less. 

And in a strange turn, in 2017, the Texas Boys

It’s a strange time for all of us, and perhaps it’s little wonder that the crop of films being released direct to streaming has itself gotten weird. How else to explain a movie where Mick Jagger plays an arts dealer who may, and this is giving nothing away, actually be the devil in disguise? (in case you don’t guess his name, it is Joseph Cassidy. As Al Pacino observed as Satan in “The Devil’s Advocate, “I have so many names.”).

“We decide for ourselves what will hurt.”

Ah, the past and the memories it leaves us. Be they good or bad they make a home in our mind and soul, guiding our life decisions and shaping who we will become. Sometimes warm, sometimes dark, our remembrances become our true and constant life companions.

Hans Petter Moland’s adaptation of Per Petterson’s novel

The definition of amulet is “a charm (such as an ornament) often inscribed with a magic incantation or symbol to aid the wearer or protect against evil such as disease or witchcraft.”

But there is a new definition. “Amulet,” a 2020 film directed by Romola Garai that is subtly eerie and one of the most effectively-directed films of 2020. Romanian actor Alec Secareanu stars

It’s inarguable that the pioneering work of Marie and Pierre Curie changed the world, for both good and ill. “Radioactive,” the new film starring Rosamund Pike and Sam Riley as the late-nineteenth century Parisians, gives us a brief on the life, and, yes, the deaths, largely due to radiation poisoning, of the couple that is part love story, part scientific procedural and, somewhat strangely, decides to also jump through time (more on this later).