The conundrums of life are given a rather more conventional depiction in this fictional biographical film, directed by James Marsh, whose reductive work on Stephen Hawking in his 2014 “The Theory of Everything” doesn’t exactly give one hope that he’ll do Beckett justice. Shot in black-and-white, the movie almost giddily partakes in components that Beckett’s

Mainly for getting rid of Pupkin, Langford makes a little inconsequential promise in the end. Alas, this leads to more delusion in Pupkin’s troubled mind, and then the movie begins to blur the line between reality and delusion. As his delusion is getting bloated more and more, Pupkin’s pathetic reality is much more obvious to

The Irish language was nearly stomped out of existence. Speaking in Irish is seen by many as a political act. Kneecap was formed in 2018 amidst the controversial “discourse” surrounding Sinn Féin’s proposed Irish Language Act. The Irish Language Act would legally place Irish on the same level as English, which would include garda interrogation

On his quest for the bestselling debut novel, Max takes on the persona and name of Sebastian – which also gives this movie its title – to go undercover as a sex worker in search of stories to tell. He learns the new digital sex work landscape, meets clients of all kinds, and flits from

Now “Harold and the Purple Crayon” has arrived in theaters in all its live-action glory. It starts on a surprisingly engaging note: a 2-D animated sequence that recaps Harold’s adventures in the book. The sequence finds a decent approximation of the book’s famous visual style and features narration by Alfred Molina. Unfortunately, that sequence lasts about

San Diego Comic-Con is on top of its game again, after the pandemic shut it down and last year’s strikes kept most of the filmmakers and actors away. While efforts to expand the city’s convention center have stalled, the Con has simply taken over the adjacent Gaslamp neighborhood, with massive signs blanketing tall buildings and

The cast, as is usually the case in mid-TV aiming for a prestige rep, is not without merit. As Sirisco, the steward of Villa Santa, the location of the nobles’ country getaway, Tony Hale (“Veep,” “Arrested Development”) does his damnedest with meager material, fighting to find shades of grey in a portrayal of a proud

The two-hander is an elegant structure for a lower-budget effort: Just plop two characters together, often in a single location, and let the actors’ performances and the innate tension of the scenario play itself out. It’s a very genre-flexible conceit, malleable enough to fit everything from murderous chamber piece to yakuza thriller to pitch-black tragicomedies starring

Maybe we’re not supposed to think that the verbal combatants standing at those lecterns are as profound as they think they are? That’s a more charitable reading. Another is that the main event onstage is a pretext to externalize what happens internally when accomplished, ego-driven people get stuck under a spotlight while coping with intensely

The movie, written and directed by Levan Akin, begins in the messy, tumultuous house where Achi, a young man who’s for all intents and purposes still a boy, lives miserably under the thumb of his older brother. Lia happens by the house, is recognized by one of its residents, and on the spot Achi concocts