Grown Goonies In The Boonies: A Review of IT Chapter 2

You know if you want to see it, and if you want to see it, you’ll see it, and if you have reservations about seeing it, IT Chapter 2, or, “Grown Goonies in the Boonies,” is likely not for you.

The DVD Wrapup: Rocketman, Last Black Man, Tasteless, Pixelia, Cruising, Handkerchiefs, Kiarostami, Ozu, More Manson, Planets, Straight Forward … More

A possible three-peat for rock biopics could have the same effect on the Oscar-cast’s slumping ratings as a bona-fide Triple Crown contender has on ratings for the Belmont Stakes.

The DVD Wrapup: All Is True, Patrick Swayze, Harder They Come, Aniara, Alice Guy-Blache, Akio Jissoji, Orcas, Ronja, Walking Dead … More

I wonder how many of the teenagers who dug ‘Romeo + Juliet’ and ‘O’ in theaters or on video enrolled in Shakespeare courses in college and went on to support local theater companies.

The DVD Wrapup: Endgame, White Crow, Vault, Trial by Fire, Shiraz, Keaton, Rafiki, Damned Summer, Anti-Nowhere League. … More

By bringing back hundreds of Marvel characters, actors and voicing talent – from Dr. Stephen Strange and Spider-Man, to Nick Fury and Groot – ‘Endgame’ effectively serves as a monumental memorial to franchise co-creator Stan Lee, who died last November, at 95.

The DVD Wrapup: Charlie Says, Reflecting Skin, Girl in the Fog, Souvenir, Girls of the Sun, Deep Space Nine, Sweet Alice, Penguin Highway, Jamestown, Patrick Melrose … More

The motivations behind such slaughter remain unfathomable. It was a freakish occurrence in the Season of the Witch … far less portentous than the current wave of massacres at Walmarts, schools and garlic festivals.

2 Key Issues From Disney’s Q3 Fiscal Announcement

1. The only thing really left from the 20th Century Fox studio that was operating for 84 years as a major is Fox Searchlight.

Basically, they have Icahn-ed the shit out of Fox.

And the DOJ didn’t blink an eye. A major studio disappeared… and all we got was this lousy feeling of nostalgia.

2. Disney just slowed down the transition to streaming. A lot.

Review: Hobbs & Shaw

I have an on-again, off-again relationship with the The Fast & The Furious franchise. I remember seeing the first film in the run, directed by the ever-cinematically flatulent Rob Cohen, 18 years ago in a room somewhere at Universal that I can’t ever remember being in before or since. And it was flawed. But it was fun. And intimate. And weird. And it was great to see in-camera car stunts that we hadn’t seen in a while.

The DVD Wrapup: Long Shot, Mountain Rest, Brighton Rock, Wildland, Ayiti Mon Amour, Hammer, Leopard Man, Woodstock, Manhunt and more

The filmmakers took an unlikely, illogical and intermittently off-putting concept and delivered a commercial comedy that should have done better at the domestic and international box office than barely break even.

Friday Movies: ONCE UPON A TIME …, Fassbinder Trilogy on Blu; Why FLORIDA PROJECT on 35mm?

Quentin Tarantino’s melancholy pop-rocket picaresque is the truest of true “hang-out” movies: key characters spend the greater part of their screen time getting from one place to another, wandering blissfully, even wantonly to an incessant song score, across a delirious period landscape, a wholly realized world. It’s also a Western, a war movie, and a snow globe, shaken now and again, of Tarantino’s fascination with the filmmaking process.

The DVD Wrapup: Ash Is Purest White, Fast Color, Dogman, High Life, Space 1999, Big Bad Fox, Fassbinder’s BRD, Klute, Baker’s Wife, Noir Archive, Master Z, Keaton 2, Hellboy 4K … More

Qiao’s pursuit takes her on a ferryboat ride down a scenic stretch of the Yangtze River, to a city that soon will be swallowed by the rising waters behind the Three Gorges Dam. Millions of people will be displaced to feed the country’s insatiable appetite for electrical power.

Friday Movies: MIDSOMMAR, THE JUNIPER TREE, THE CURE, COOKED

Oh, shit: shit happens. Or “Holy shit, right?”

The DVD Wrapup: Facets, Eliana, Moullet, Pet Sematary, The Loveless, Transit, Kanarie, Escape Plan 3, Island Earth, Tough Ones, Pretenders, Broad City … More

In 1978, the odds of Facets succeeding against the Goliaths were roughly the same as the Cubs making the World Series. Both persevered, however.

The DVD Wrapup: War & Peace, Heiresses, Styx, Maze, Felix Austria, Winter Passage, Fatso, Horror, 24-Hour Party People, FM, Cavett’s Baseball Heroes … More

The USSR must have been pretty flush, if it could afford to send ballistic missiles to Cuba and greenlight one of the most expensive movie epics of all time … anywhere.

Friday Movies: LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO; DO THE RIGHT THING; ROLLING THUNDER REVUE; DEAD DON’T DIE; GARRY WINOGRAND; IN THE AISLES

Some movies you walk into knowing nothing and upon leaving, you feel in at least some way you know everything. Joe Talbot’s luminous, mesmeric The Last Black Man In San Francisco is a temporal-topographical dreamspace of sweet hallucination.

The DVD Wrapup: Slaughterhouse Rulez, Silver Lake, Dark Sense, Swing Kids, Cherry Grove, Karloff/Lugosi, Running Man, Between the Lines, Crypto … More

What begins as a darkish teen comedy, set in an elite British boarding school, makes an abrupt midcourse correction by adding monsters, a corrupt dean and fracking, of all things.

The DVD Wrapup: Michelin Stars, Captain Marvel, Sower, Cielo, Frank in Palm Springs, Swing Time, Can’t Stop the Music, Entity, Blood … More

Although professional sports may have next to nothing to do with haute cuisine and fine dining experiences, the awarding of a Michelin Star to a world-class restaurant may be as significant as any trophy … OK, there’s the Oscars.

The DVD Wrapup: Madea Funeral, Sharon Tate, Gloria Bell, Women at War, Guy, Farinelli, Screwball, The Kid, Andromeda Strain, Woody Guthrie, Jack Ryan, Sara Stein … More

No one has more at stake in the controversy over Georgia’s heartbeat abortion bill than multi-hyphenate mogul Tyler Perry and the businesses and individuals who count on him for income. It took a while, but Hollywood and cable producers have fallen in line behind calls for a boycott of the state, if the legislation is fully enacted. (Among other things, a woman who isn’t aware she’s pregnant could be put on trial for miscarrying the fetus.) In 2016, Perry spoke out against legislation, which, effectively, would allow businesses to discriminate against members of the LGBTQ community. The governor’s decision not to sign the law may have been influenced by Perry’s comments.

Friday Movies: ROCKETMAN, THE SOUVENIR, LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD,THE BRINK

Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir is as mysterious as it is specific, tracing the drift of Julie, an intensely ambitious film student who is distracted by a first true love affair, with a man who appears to take her seriously indeed. Set in the 1980s artistic era in which the writer-director grew up, Hogg’s fourth feature describes how a film narrative can flow around the range of thoughts and emotions that a shy young woman holds as she hopes to make art. Places and faces are equally expressive realms. Can imagination be mere delusion? What are her dreams? Hogg dreamt them, dreams them, again, as distanced onscreen memoir, and the dream is furthered by Byrne’s mesmerizing, fleeting performance.

The DVD Wrapup: Eleven, Genesis 2.0, Climax, Sweet Murder, Let Sunshine In, One Sings, Eugenie, JCVDx2, Boom!, Velvet … More

Someone had to be the last one to die and typically it was because of a mistake made by an overzealous officer or a soldier who wasn’t on the need-to-know list.

The DVD Wrapup: Big Brother, Iceman, Upside, White Chamber, Trading Paint, Dark Place, Ruben Brandt, Lords of Chaos, Earthquake, Seduction, Les Miz … More

I can’t recall whether Chen has a degree or was trained as a teacher, but he’s committed to using unconventional methods to reach the dead-enders.