I recently received a royalty check on my book Charlie Chan at the Movies and realized that the start date on that project is now 30 years old. The book itself has only been out 26 years. It took a long time to write a book in those days when research materials were scarce and […]

It’s no good glossing o’er the facts — last week was either a disappointment or a tough slog or both. As if to make up for it this week the movie gods are treating us to three mainstream titles, two art titles, and one of those faith-based pictures. The word overkill comes readily to mind.

In Theaters. This is an odd week. We get one — count it — bona fide mainstream title, one title that may be pretending to be one, and no less than three art titles, two of which are documentaries — with the third (and best) being pretty much drowned at birth by the way it’s […]

In Theaters.  OK, here it is — the first week of the real fall movie season and we have one mainstream release, one expanding to mainstream art title and one little art title of some note which is likely to be crushed under the combined weight of those two. That’s assuming it isn’t already going […]

In Theaters. It started out as a simple week — two mainstream titles (including one potential juggernaut) and three art titles. Then one of the titles (the less likely) decided it needed a Wednesday opening for reasons that are anybody’s guess, since neither the date, nor the movie is special. Oh, but it didn’t end […]

Art films aside, just how bad is the current crop of movies? Well, when you consider that Jurassic World, Inside Out, Pixels, Southpaw, and Dope are all being re-released this week, you know things are grim. (No, this does not mean all of those films are opening locally. At this point, the only one I know that’s coming here is Inside Out.) That said, there’s one very bright spot in the local mix on the art front.

If it wasn’t for the art titles, this week would look pretty grim — especially when compared with last week which was at least respectable. This is an entirely different can of worms. Others may feel differently.

Now that Jurassic World and Inside Out have finally been brought down by some pretty unlikely competition, things settle down a little this week.

I’m not claiming that this marks the full start of the fall-into-awards season, but goodness knows it looks better than the last few weeks. Well, at least it looks like a partial improvement — and there’s one pretty terrific art title, too — so we can say things are looking up. In their way.

In Theaters. It would not be unreasonable to expect that this week will be an improvement over last week in terms of mainstream offerings. Not unreasonable, no. But will we get such a thing? When the big offering is the purported “comeback” of M. Night Shyamalan…well, what do you think? I should explain that while there […]

In Theaters.  This week consists of two art titles (that have been reviewed) and three mainstream titles that no one appears to have been allowed to see yet. (Or if they have been, they’ve been told to sit on the reviews.) This, as the savvy moviegoer knows, is rarely a good sign. The surprising thing […]