• “What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.”

    Filmmaker Kogonada’s “After Yang” was selected as part of the Sundance Film Festival’s “Best of the Fest.” These are films that are chosen to make their Sundance premiere even as they may have already been shown at another festival. In this case, “After Yang” premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival

  • Characters in Yorgos Lanthimos’s movies seem moved by strange spirits and unknown motivations. From the beginning of “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” questions come up: what is the relationship of Dr. Steven Murphy, an established surgeon, to Martin (Barry Keoghan), a teenager who has no connection to the doctor or his family? Why is Martin so weird, anyway? Martin’s father died on the operating table a couple years earlier.

  • For his follow-up to “In Bruges” director Martin McDonagh has assembled a cast touched upon by the eccentric-comedy gods. Everything about “Seven Psychopaths” defies convention and logic, an asset that adds to the outright lunacy on display. I loved how over-the-top it is, both in its bloody violence (people set afire, heads sawed off, a sequence so dementedly funny I wouldn’t want to ruin it) and willingness to

  • “Total Recall”, the unnecessary remake starring Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel, and Kate Beckinsale, proves that all the computer-generated imagery in the digital world cannot simulate a believable storyline. This movie stands proudly in the company of “Transformers”, “G.I. Joe”, and every other action flick with gossamer believability. The story involves a factory worker named Douglas Quaid (the pectoral Mr. Farrell) who struggles

  • Yes, you heard right. Mary Poppins is getting an update--it will be called Saving Mr. Banks, will be produced by Disney and is adapted from a screenplay by Kelly Marcel. John Lee Hancock will direct. Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson (Meryl Streep was first in line to get the role) have already been attached, as previously reported by Deadline, and Colin Farrell has officially joined the party. The Irish actor will play the father of the novelist, an alcoholic