Steve Jobs (2015) isn’t the usual big screen biopic. Ostensibly adapted from Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography, Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay discards the familiar birth-to-death sweep to offer a triptych of snapshots of Jobs, the co-founder of Apple who became the face of the company over his stormy stewardship, driving innovation and driving out opposition. Apart from […]
Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … The weekly column is featured in The Seattle Times, The Spokesman-Review, and other newspapers. HBO launches “The Outsider,” a murder mystery with a supernatural twist, adapted from the Stephen King novel by Richard Price […]
Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010), a caper film that heists dreams instead of treasure, is surely the most cerebral action thriller to become a blockbuster. It’s a genre film that reshuffles the rules and lays them out in a mind-bending pattern. Playing out on multiple planes of dream reality, it’s also another Nolan film to completely […]
Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … The weekly column is featured in The Seattle Times, The Spokesman-Review, and other newspapers. Joaquin Phoenix took home a Golden Globe for his performance as a mentally-troubled man who becomes a psychopathic supervillain in […]
In Moon (2009), Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is on the verge of unraveling. He’s the lone operator of a moonbase operation mining the new moon rock wonder fuel that has solved Earth’s energy, with only a computerized robot named Gertie (voiced by Kevin Spacey in a dispassionate HAL-9000 tone with just a hint of human […]
The Homesman (2014) was overlooked by critics in the rush to praise more conventional and less resonant films in 2014. It deserves a second look. Tommy Lee Jones directs, co-writes, and stars in the film as George Briggs, a drifter saved from a lynching by Mary Bee (Hilary Swank), a tough, capable settler who has […]
Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … The weekly column is featured in The Seattle Times, The Spokesman-Review, and other newspapers. “Midsommar” (2019, R) sends a quartet of American students to a Swedish commune for its annual solstice celebration, but all […]
Pan’s Labyrinth (Spain, 2006), Guillermo del Toro’s dark fairy tale, is an elemental Alice in Wonderland amidst the horrors of Francisco Franco’s reign of terror in 1944 Spain. Our Alice is an imaginative young girl named Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) who escapes into an elemental wonderland after she moves into the country estate with her ailing […]
In January, Netflix launches the original series Dracula, a new take on the horror classic from Sherlock creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis, and Messiah, a geopolitical thriller with a religious dimension starring Michelle Monaghan, along with the British crime drama Girl/Haji, about a Japanese detective in London and A Fall from Grace, a new […]
Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … The weekly column is featured in The Seattle Times, The Spokesman-Review, and other newspapers. “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” (2019, R) is another mix of history and fantasy from Quentin Tarantino, a paean […]
