“We had to assert our dignity in small ways. That’s why these napkins are beautiful. That’s why my mother’s gloves were beautiful. Little details that tell the world we are not invisible.”
I have been waiting for this movie for so long, and I had no intention of watching it on HBO Max, movies are back in the theatres, and that’s where I’m seeing them! So off to the AMC 16 we went.
Could it live up to the hype? Could it be as good as…
Read MoreFor 70 years, Mexico was ruled by The Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) or PRI, a center-right party known for corruption and repression. With a government that had little to no interest in putting a stop to the drug trade, the cartels flourished. In the year 2000, Vicente Fox was elected president, representing The National Action Party (Partido Acción Nacional) or PAN, a right-wing party rejecting a fundamental adherence to left- or right-wing policies. However, it was Felipe Calderón, also from the PAN Party, who kicked off the drug war when elected in 2006. He dispatched 6,500 Mexican Army soldiers…
Read More“The ray that destroyed the space station and knocked us off our course may have originated right here!”
“Oh come off it, how can a bunch of women invent a gizmo like that?”
“Sure, and even if they invented it, how could they aim it? You know how women drivers are!”
In the far off future of 1985…
Read MoreBeing a wife is some heavy sh*t. I in fact was raised to be a wife, an upper-middle class American Jewish wife, to be precise. Obviously this education proved a massive failure, but impressive and ongoing campaigns on the level of Hannibal's pachyderm army were employed…
For Memorial Day, I thought I would talk about the most Memorial Day kind of movie there is, as it’s about war and dying in battle, but it’s not sad or depressing. Production started on September 2, 1945, the exact day that the war ended, and is a tribute to all of the people who lost their lives in that terrible conflict, while also being about a man who refuses to accept his fate…
Read MoreGather round, children, and I will tell you a tale.
Back in the olden days, there was no streaming, no DVRs, no DVDs, no VCRs, no Roku, no cable channels beyond Z Channel, which was a local to LA premium cable channel before the term existed, and it didn’t matter anyway, because we didn’t have it at my house. There were just the broadcast stations ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and the local stations KTLA, KTTV, KCAL, and KCOP…
Read MoreJosh and Benny Safdie have been making low budget films in New York for over ten years, mostly in and around Queens and Manhattan. They’ve been known to just use random people on the streets as their actors. In 2014, they released a movie based on a book written by Arielle Holmes, about her real life as a homeless heroin addict entitled Heaven Knows What. They cast Arielle herself to play the lead. It’s a fantastic film this critic highly recommends, however this piece…
Read MoreI was looking for something to watch, and nothing was really popping for me, so I went over to Prime and what right on the first page was Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles, because I recently put it on my watchlist when I was reminded that I had planned on seeing it in 2019 and then completely forgot about it! So, perfect timing.
For me, Fiddler on the Roof is Zero Mostel. I even saw him play Tevye…
Read MoreIt was sometime in the mid to late 90’s when Martin McDonagh was riding a bus through America. It was somewhere in the southern states where a specific billboard caught his eye. It described a gruesome death, and called out police for not doing anything. “The sign flashed by…
Read MoreMatt (Ed Helms) is a 45 year old single man who knows one thing for certain, that he wants to be a father. So what do you do when you have the means and the desire, but no partner? You find yourself a donor egg and a gestational surrogate, that’s what you do.
Anna (Patti Harrison) is a 26 year old single woman who…
Read MoreAfter the release of In Bruges in 2008, Martin Mcdonagh had a couple of scripts written and ready to go, but decided to take a couple years off to travel. He already had one in mind, and was planning on making his screenplay Seven Psychopaths into his next film. Production on Seven Psychopaths started sometime in early to mid 2011, and was released in North America on October 12th, 2012. The film stars Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Christopher Walken, and Tom Waits.
Colin Farrell plays Marty, a screenwriter trying to finish, or even start his script entitled Seven Psychopaths. One might wonder if Marty…
Read MoreNext week, we celebrate the re-opening of our Secret Movie Club Theater after 15 months of Covid shutdown with a 35mm screening of Steven Spielberg’s 1971 debut feature film Duel.
Before anyone takes us on with the totally valid point that Duel was originally a 75 minute made for TV movie and was only later expanded by 15 minutes to a feature film (released abroad), this Programmer humbly submits that for all intents and purposes, it really should be considered a feature film.
It’s extremely special to this Programmer because it has all the hallmarks…
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