“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

When making a documentary out in nature, sometimes the story will find the filmmakers along the way. Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble spent four years solidly with a small team on the African savanna following an elephant pack led by a female named Athena for their new documentary, “The Elephant Queen,” but they always wanted to do it their own way, and not have financiers dictating the direction of their story.

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.

The scandal surrounding the revelations contained in the Panama Papers is labyrinthine. So complex, in fact, that Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Jake Bernstein spent years unearthing the intricacies of the enmeshment of the financial system and Russian interests for his book, “Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite,” which came out in 2017.

John Rambo’s “final” adventure is upon us, and (spoiler alert), he rides off into the sunset—no matter that he’s critically injured. Will he be back? Or has the character finally outstayed his welcome?

In a word: perhaps. The fact that the “First Blood” franchise has lasted nearly forty years over five films is kind of amazing in and of itself. Unlike Rocky Balboa, John Rambo has never precisely

The 63rd BFI London Film Festival has announced its jury line-up for this year’s Festival Awards.

The Official Competition jury is led by acclaimed Colette (LFF 2018) and Still Alice director Wash Westmoreland, whose latest film Earthquake Bird screens in this year’s Festival; the First Feature Competition (Sutherland Award) jury will be headed up by Austrian director Jessica Hausner

Rob Zombie’s latest film “3 From Hell” is the third film in his Firefly Clan trilogy and quite simply one of his best ones. This is a blood-soaked homage to the seventies grindhouse films that Zombie grew up admiring and the kind of wild genre craziness that became a major influence on both his music and directorial style.

This is intense genre filmmaking on high levels. Zombie has been coasting for some years