Make no mistake, Moonlight delivers powerful emotions

Barry Jenkins got so much right with Moonlight. When I caught up with this year’s Academy Award winner for the coveted Best Picture trophy on my flat screen with my dear wife Karen, I sat stock still following the three-part telling of the life and times of a boy, teen and man named Chiron as…

Who’s the real outcast in Table 19, you’ll wonder

Oh, Eloise seems so put together as she makes her entrance way back there to sit with the other (very) strangers sitting around table in the way back in the reception of her best friend, whose brother is the best man. And also is the guy who dumped her two months ago. By text. Which…

The Sapphires brings a needed shine to Aboriginal talent

The photo of Chris O’Dowd in a hipster singing pose with the interestingly arranged women surrounding him caught my attention on the Blu-Ray rack at the Liverpool Public Library. The Sapphires, I mused to myself, rolling the title around for a moment before I pulled it and checked it out at my workplace for viewing…

You never know when you’ll fall in like with the spies next door

Opposites sure do attract. Movies like Keeping Up With the Joneses wouldn’t have it any other way. This action-adventure-comedy directed by Greg Mottola from a screenplay by Michael LeSieur sends a godly secret agent couple played by statuesque Jon Hamm and Gal Godot undercover into an Atlanta cu de sac populated by the scrupulously ordinary…

The boy from Mars and a girl from Earth make their own space

Director Peter Chelsom has delivered to this world with The Space Between Us two movies in one. The first is a space story, a tale of a frantically motivated businessman driven to bring humankind to a colony on Mars. Gary Oldman plays organization patriarch Nathaniel Shepherd as a complex dude who won’t take no for…

Natalie Portman pours her soul into Jackie

Natalie Portman deserves every honor that comes her way for Jackie. She takes this complicated part from the mind of director Pablo Larrain and pen of screenwriter Noah Oppenheim and makes sure audiences for sure think yes, that is what we remember of our Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy in this critical time of U.S. history, be…