Neither about nor for children, but recommended nonetheless
Dir: Evan Morgan. Canada. 2020. 100 mins.
The first mystery posed by “The Kid Detective” may be how such a smart movie got stuck with such a dumb title. It sounds like some early ’70s Disney…

‘Kid Detective’: Review

Michelle Pfeiffer plays the diva in a slow, stubbornly quirky comedy
Dir: Azazel Jacobs. US/UK. 2020. 113 mins.
The phrase “French exit” is slang for a hasty departure, said when someone rushes out with even a fast farewell. The film French Exit,…

‘French Exit’: NYFF Review

Sofia Coppola and Bill Murray deliver a soft-focus view of a Manhattan that now almost seems like a dream
Dir: Sofia Coppola. U.S. 2020. 96 mins
Nostalgia is a dangerous temptation, but Sofia Coppola’s comedy On the Rocks, premiering at the New York…

‘On The Rocks’: NYFF Review

The horror begins within.
A sense of the other. A lurking fear. A strange feeling that grows and grows until it finally explodes.
And suddenly you’re a mother.
Pregnancy has been a mainstay in horror films since at least Village of the Damned, when a…

In Isaac Webb’s ‘First Born,’ Marriage Is Motherhood’s Original Trauma

Some films are content to give you a slice of life. Northwood Pie gives you the whole greasy pizza.
Set in relentlessly normal Irvine, Calif., it’s the amiable, slightly stoned story of a gang of low-achieving friends who spend their days avoiding…

Northwood Pie

They left America to wage a war. They came home to find another one.
America’s battlefield medicine has come a long way since the last generation of warriors. But the irony is that the men and women who now survive traumatic injuries often survive…

Unprescribed

When you see what most “faith-based” films turn out like, it’s a sin.
Modestly budgeted indies made for church-going audiences, their aims are small and their methods predictable. They star a publicly devout actor. They have a central tragedy, which…

Shooting Heroin

Here we take you on a tour of the East Village’s famous film spots—and so much more. You’ll need imagination, memory, and pastrami.
The East Village isn’t so much a neighborhood as a state of mind.
In the early 1960s, it was still just the upper…

Your Guide to Manhattan's East Village in the Movies

Film Racket Movie Reviews

The romantic comedy Toss It starts with someone flipping a coin – but ultimately it’s the audience that’s the loser.
The lead actress is unappealingly cold. The script is overly talky. And the director seems unsure of how to help the star, or the…

Toss It

Video games are not movies, but a lot of movie makers haven’t gotten the message.
Every so often, directors still try to turn at-home entertainment into an in-theater event. Problem is, they’re different things meant for different audiences. Film…

Burning Dog

Almost anyone is capable of anything, and in noir, they’re always capable of much worse.
More of a mood than a genre, film noir is filled with sadistic husbands, femme fatales and poor jerks who always get left holding the bag. There are no happy…

Chameleon

It’s the only sport that matters.
Feverish fans of hockey, football, baseball and basketball can argue all they want, of course. But boxing is fundamentally different. Two warriors enter a ring. One walks out victorious. The other may not walk out at…

Movie Review

Champs

With the new Three Chilies, Rutgers Dining Services' third food truck, the university can offer more meal-plan options with global take on tacos. Bridgewater Courier News
As a conceptual artist, Park McArthur lives where the philosophical meets the…

Park McArthur inspires young artists as Rutgers' Tepper Chair

Walk around Times Square and the rest of Manhattan’s fabled Theater District, and the chances are you’ll be flooded with memories from the movies shot there.
“The theatuh, the theatuh,” Gary Merrill’s Bill Simpson says mockingly in All About Eve…

Your Guide to New York's Theater District in the Movies

Dir: Zeina Durra. UK/Egypt. 2019. 85 mins.
Ancient history, both historic and personal, haunts Luxor, a film about a British woman trying to reconnect with her past and its own unfulfilled promise. Zeina Durra’s latest, premiering at Sundance, stars…

‘Luxor’: Sundance Review

Gripping documentary which offers a front-line dispatch from the war on homosexuality
Dir/scr: David France. US. 2020. 107 mins.
Degenerate outsiders, decadent influences, and a nation whose only defence is to “purify” its bloodlines through…

‘Welcome To Chechnya’: Sundance Review

A burglar ends up stealing his victim’s heart in this unusual documentary from Norway
Dir: Benjamin Ree. Norway. 2020. 102 mins.
A painted portrait tries to capture its subject in two dimensions. The Painter and the Thief sees its subjects in…

‘The Painter And The Thief’: Sundance Review

The latest version of Henry James’ haunted house classic fails to raise a scare
Dir: Floria Sigismondi. US. 2020. 94mins
Based on Henry James’ monstrous 1898 masterpiece ’The Turn Of The Screw’, The Turning fails to make the most of its source…