Life turns sad and funny in International Falls

Imagine a stand-up comic pulling into a very small and what appears to be a very tired town to perform what seems to be, oh, his umpteenth-thousandth routine in front of a room (maybe) full of people who (perhaps) will laugh (at him or his material?) There we have the set up for <em>International Falls</em>,…

Bliss comes with many wrinkles for Owen Wilson, Selma Hayek

Life is not going well for Greg. This we know when we meet him in his work office, ignoring his work phone while answering his cell to apologize for personal wrongdoings to his daughter. Once his co-workers get through to him, he’s summoned to the boss’ office. Told he’s fired. Reacts badly. Doesn’t turn out…

Ethan Hawke stews with big ideas stifled in Tesla

The name comes up often in our day when people talk about high-tech cars that I am quite sure will remain forever out of my financial grasp. It also echoes when the ideas that make these sorts of machines possible are discussed thoroughly enough that the man who first had them bouncing around his brain…

It’s hard to win them over when you’re New in Town

Imagine if you will having a quite comfy management job in Miami and then being told you’re being sent to a faraway factory to see if products can be realigned, union contracts can be adjusted, consumers’ tastes can be reconfigured … and if not, a whole bunch of people likely will be out of the…

They learn to make more than pizza in Little Italy

I must admit right from the first sentence that my soft spot for Emma Roberts’ work grew from her gotta-grow-up role as Amy in the 2013 not-what-you’d-think from the title funny little drama <em>Adult World</em>. I so enjoyed her work next to Evan Peters as the good guy who teaches her a thing or three…

The Only Living Boy in New York hurdles over eccentric

Movie buffs most likely are way, way deep into the streaming platform search lists in the hopes for that unearthed gem by this point of the second winter of our COVID-19 isolation. We are in our living room. So I stopped on Amazon Prime’s <em>The Only Living Boy in New York</em> and hit play one…

Sylvie’s Love hits the right chords

Sylvie seems fairly satisfied with her life sitting behind the counter in her father’s pretty hip New York City music store, where she can harbor her hopes of somehow, some way fulfilling her dreams of finding a foothold in the TV production world. That’s where her aspirations and knowledge lie, in what goes into and…