Movie Reviews and Other Writings

DISCLAIMER: I didn't see this film in a theater. I watched it with my HBO Max subscription. I highly recommend you don't go see it in a theater even if it is playing near you. That's too risky with all the surges in virus cases across the U.S. and the world. Stay safe! Wonder Woman 1984 is about Max Lord who is desperate to find a way to pull himself out of a drastic financial hole after making promises he couldn't keep to investors. He buddies up to brilliant, kind, and clum

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is about a recording session for the "Mother of the Blues," Ma Rainey, and her band. The tensions run high as Levee, the trumpet player, expresses his individuality and boasts that he has a band of his own lined up. Ma senses the dissent and that Levee is horning in on her girl. The power struggle continues as Ma fights for her needs with her manager and the producer of the record. It's all on a hot summer's day with only one small fan to try and cool

I'm Your Woman is about Jean, a thief's wife, whose life is thrown into uncertainty when her husband doesn't come home one night. Suddenly, Jean's husband Eddie's colleagues roust Jean from bed and get her to go on the run because Eddie's missing and some bad people are after him. Being left completely in the dark, Jean, her baby son Harry, and a man she just met who's meant to protect her, Cal, are off on the road and out of the city. And the tension ratchets up from there.

The Prom is a musical about a lesbian high school student in a small town in Indiana who just wants to take her girlfriend to prom. The PTA gets involved and cancels prom for every student. A group of down on their luck actors stumble across the news item and decide it will become their cause to build back their personas and not be seen as such narcissists. When the actors descend, it makes things worse. Everyone learns to be more tolerant in the process of rebuilding. The fi

I usually don't give much in the way of commentary here. I usually let the films speak for themselves and for the most part, I will with these, but this year is different. This was a year when movie theaters shuttered early in the year and as people tired of being at home, they opened again with a whimper, never making even close to their former glory. Now most have shuttered again, some to never open back up. In a typical year I would see around 50 films in a theater and abo

Let Them All Talk is about a novelist who is very secretive about her work, and especially her latest project. She's asked to attend an awards ceremony in her honor in the U.K., but doesn't like to fly, so her agency puts her onto the Queen Mary II for a crossing of the Atlantic. She brings along her two oldest friends and her nephew, Tyler. New literary agent, Karen, also is along for the ride, but in secret as she enlists Tyler in her attempts to find out the status of the

Sound of Metal is about Ruben, a rock and roll drummer, who discovers he's going deaf. Ruben's partner and band member Lou is worried that Ruben will relapse into his addictions and calls Ruben's sponsor for advice. Ruben goes to live at a sober house for the deaf where he learns how to sign and to live with his hearing loss. Yet, it's not enough for Ruben. He wants what he lost back and he does what he can to get the money to pay for an expensive implant surgery, which will

Mank is a film about Hollywood. To narrow down that a little more, it's a film about a period in the life of screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz in which he conceived of and wrote the screenplay that would become Citizen Kane. Mankiewicz drew on his own experiences with William Randolph Hearst, Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, and Marion Davies, which made everyone attempt to talk him out of the project. They wanted to warn him away from this subject because he was going to make v