In the script from Kristen Lazarian and Paulina Lagudi Ulrich, the fisherman, João, has suffered a devastating loss at the beginning of the film, making the surprising arrival of the penguin that much more poignant. Jean Reno gives a vulnerable, moving performance as João, a simple man broken by tragedy transformed by the thrill of this unexpected connection. He shows great range here, from sorrow to joy to an impish sense

Beth’s a breast cancer survivor, and Jay doesn’t really know how to talk with her about what she went through. She’s also plagued by nightmarish, PTSD-style images of her body rebelling against her, either during or following a traumatic medical procedure. Jay clearly wants to make Beth feel seen and appreciated but doesn’t seem to

Hunter, your character’s weapon of choice by the film’s end isn’t a gun but a butterfly knife. I love how you play an unconventional “scream queen” in that you have to survive with a lot of restrictions … you really just have your knife, sling, and iPod to fight with. Was there a skill that

The remarkably boring Charlotte Kirk plays Scarlett Monaghan, a woman approached by a suave gentleman named Robert McNaughton (Philip Winchester) while out with her deadly dull boyfriend at the club one night. Robert and Scarlett have instant chemistry, so they pretty quickly dispatch with Mr. Wrong and begin a steamy affair before Scarlett discovers how

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