• The year is 1770. Marianne (Noémie Merlant), the daughter of a renowned painter and a painter herself travels to an island off the coast of Brittany, tasked wit painting the portrait of a noblewoman, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). Héloïse has recently left the convent where she led a life of seclusion because of a family tragedy: Her sister has met a tragic end on the verge of marrying a Milanese gentleman. Her mother (Valeria

  • A gang leader on the lam in search of redemption. A prostitute eager to gain her freedom back. Together they will decide to play one last gamble with their fate, the proverbial last big hit. Within this narrative proposition, a discrete romantic plot that will come to fit within the film’s dramatic structure. This is “Wild Goose Lake,” by Chinese director Yi'nan Diao, a film that’s inferior to his previous ones. It’s convoluted

  • Given his background in journalism, it’s little wonder that director Edward Zwick turned to an investigative reporter’s work as the basis for his latest film, “Trial by Fire.” The film is based on an article of the same name by David Grann published in the New Yorker in 2009 about a Texas man who was almost certainly wrongfully executed for the murder of his three children; DNA evidence exonerated him too late. Zwick and Grann had

  • Life sometimes requires us to swallow our ego, put out fires and resolve crises on a variety of fronts, family, work, children. How about if this were the case all the time? How do we confront these adversities, but more to the point, where do we find the gumption to do so?  In Franco Lolli’s very personal film “Litigante,” there’s something almost invasive about watching Silvia (Carolin Sanin) go through a life that seems to be getting

  • When planetary disaster strikes the planet, one turns to country-music for solace. The song in question was written by Grammy-nominated country music singer Sturgill Simpson and keeps making a comeback throughout “The Dead Don’t Die,” the new Jim Jarmusch film which opened the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. The song, which shows up repeatedly in dialogues, on a CD that changes hands, is a mantra, something for

  • Doris Day’s death at age 97 was announced today. A star in a league of her own, mainly between 1948 and 1968, she was one of those dainty American women living in a world of charming comedies where the most forward move possible in a couple would be a chaste kiss, where a housewife wearing high heels and an apron like those of a French maid busily put meatloaf or casserole in the oven, where blond hair were perfectly-coiffed

  • Academy Award nominees Annette Bening (“The Kids Are All Right,” “American Beauty”) and Michelle Pfeiffer (“Murder on the Orient Express”) have signed on to star in director Gideon Raff’s (“Homeland”, “Tyrant”, “Dig”, and the upcoming “The Red Sea Diving Resort” and “The Spy” thriller “Turn of Mind.” Adapted by Pulitzer Prize winner Doug Wright (“I Am My Own Wife,” “Quills”) and based on Alice LaPlante’s