Steven Soderbergh is perhaps our most adventurous filmmaker. He straddles the worlds of big-budget Hollywood and Independent cinema with ease and skill. We never know what kind of film he will do next and, good or bad, Soderbergh always surprises.

His latest film is “The Laundromat,” a look at the Panama Papers scandal based ever so loosely on Jake Bernstein’s book

Scorsese has directed many a cinematic winner. But, with the exception of 2016’s “Silence” (which I found to be brilliant on so many levels) it had been a while since the accolades of brilliance could be applied to this filmmaker.

Make no mistake, it is rare when he fumbles, and most of his films have found their way unto my Ten Best lists of their respective years. But over the last decade

Bruce Springsteen and Thom Zimny’s “Western Stars” is more than a concert film. Both structurally and musically, this unique cinema experience is an homage to the life and philosophies of the American Western. The film and album are based on the constant struggle for individualism while maintaining a connection to family and friends, the eternal struggle of the cowboy.

“Women. No matter how human they seem... they’re just shadows. But on the other hand, aren’t we all?”

From the edges of the bizarre and the extremely weird, “She’s Just A Shadow” is truly something else.

The matriarch of a Tokyo prostitution empire, married to a vicious and violent pimp, leads her own gang against

“Dolemite is My Name”, the new film from the immensely-talented Craig Brewer, is a pleasant surprise and certainly one of the most entertaining and emotionally satisfying films I have seen this year.

The wildly-vulgar character of Dolemite was the brainchild of struggling seventies comedian Rudy Ray Moore. Moore's material was too raw for the major record labels of those days, but the

“Ad astra,” the new film by James Gray, is more meditation than story. The title (one half of the latin phrase “per aspera ad astra” or “through hardships to the stars”) is apt given the amount of time travel and the fascinating hardware that allows it, though the tale meanders, causing some confusion. With various stellar transportation modes, it takes us from one distant planet to the next without a clear mission statement. Basically, the quest

A devious and creepy psychological film in the horror/thriller genre has made its way into cinemas in the form of Robert Eggers’s second feature, “The Lighthouse.” His first film “The Witch” was a masterpiece of tone and tension and staked its claim as one of the finest horror films of the past twenty-five years.

Now comes Eggers’s latest film, one that is sure to shock, enthrall, and completely divide

A Takashi Miike film. Don’t be afraid. Jump into his cinematic world. While he isn’t always perfect, good or bad, his films hold unique and fascinating wonders for cinephiles.

“First Love” ("Hatsukoi" in the original Japanese, is Miike’s best film since 2010’s “13 Assassins.” This is a wild ride but just wild enough. Being a Miike film, we are treated to scenes

I’m always skeptical when a film receives too much hype. With the on-again, off-again quality of American fare, I try not to set my hopes too high, especially when it comes to a film about the D.C. Comics's The Joker, by the director of “The Hangover” series.

It is with great pleasure that I report that, while the film itself isn’t the cinematic masterpiece that some have christened it, Todd Phillips’s “Joker” is one of the finest films of 2019 with Joaquin Phoenix delivering one of the great performances of modern cinema, and definitely his personal best.

And here's me breathing a sigh of relief. Almodovar has made another masterpiece, a work of art. “Dolor y Gloria" is sublime! I’d become disillusioned with the El Deseo jefe. “Broken embraces,” “La Piel que lo habito” were colorful, if shoddily-written films that lacked substance and felt saturated with fabricated emotions. Those were films, I could but only deduce, made by a filmmaker in existential decline. But with "Dolor y Gloria,”