Before they became the kind of actors one gets when one wants to add a little class to an otherwise iffy production, Ben Kingsley and Michael Caine headlined the Sherlock Holmes spoof Without a Clue (1988), a gentle period comedy that cheekily posits that the fictional Holmes both did and did not exist. Without a…
The Wrecking Crew ★★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Denny Tedesco Magnolia Pictures (Official Site) 101 Minutes Release Date March 13, 2015 (limited); DVD release June 15, 2015 – It was the 1960s and American pop music, long dominated by the so-called “Brill Building Sound,” had moved across the country. California was where it was at, and…
VANish ★★★★✫ Director: Bryan Bockbrader Dark Sky Films (Official Site) 79 Minutes Available February 24 on VOD, iTunes, DVD and Blu-ray – Bryan Bockbrader’s directorial debut VANish (2015) is a tight little action-horror film with plenty of twists, turns and splatter to entertain even the most jaded of indie movie fans. This ultra low-budget flick…
The Wild Affair (1963) is a charming, light and sophisticated British sex comedy, sadly forgotten despite being incredibly influential in its day. A vehicle for early-60s cinematic It Girl Nancy Kwan, The Wild Affair concerns a young working girl, her hapless fiance, assorted colleagues and the ever-present worry that one has not lived enough before…
Johnny Moon (William Shatner) is a loner and wanderer in the unsettled American West, on a mission to find his long-estranged twin brother Notah (also Shatner) and settle a score. Both men are of mixed race, half European white and half Native American, and while Johnny identifies as a white man, the murderous Notah…
When a Hollywood production company discovers they have a half million dollars in unclaimed profit they have to lose to avoid prosecution by the Feds, they come up with a wacky scheme: to film a truly awful television pilot so bad it guarantees a loss. The president of the company sends his son Frank (Mike…
A series of cute pencil sketches and a light mambo-esque theme song in the opening credits hardly prepare us for the first frames of Kill or Cure (1962), a wacky British comedy-murder mystery starring the delightful Terry-Thomas. As the theme song (featuring someone who sounds an awful lot like Thurl Ravenscroft) fades out, a slow…
Song One Original Motion Picture Soundtrack ★★★★✫ Released by Lakeshore Records Available digitally and on CD on January 13, 2015 – There’s something pretty great about an informal mixtape, a quick compilation for yourself, or a few random songs here and there you kept meaning to send to a friend and finally got around to…
Song One ★✫✫✫✫ Director: Kate Barker-Froyland Film Arcade (Official Site) 86 Minutes In Theaters Beginning January 23, 2015 (Limited) – When Franny (Anne Hathaway), a young graduate student estranged from her family, learns her younger brother Henry (Ben Rosenfield) has been critically injured, she races home to find him in a coma, and her estranged…
The Duke of Burgundy ★★★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Peter Strickland IFC Films 106 Minutes In Theaters Beginning January 23, 2015 (Limited) – Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna) arrives at the opulent home of Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), a beautiful but stern entomologist. Angry at her maid Evelyn for her lack of perfection, Cynthia spends the day reading…