Miller’s Girl (2024)

The titular Miller’s Girl puts on airs of being an author — but then so does writer/director Jade Halley Bartlett, which explains high school senior Cairo Sweet’s (Jenna Ortega) penchant for narration, a device that belongs in books (and maybe documentaries) but is otherwise flaccid, sloppy writing (also, Cairo Sweet? Really? As made up as...

Instinct (1999)

Instinct exists in a mirror universe caught between Manhunter and Red Dragon — and, mirrorlike, it’s all surface and no substance. Dr. Ethan Powell (Anthony Hopkins) is best described as a comparatively benevolent Hannibal Lecter, and Dr. Theo Caulder (Cuba Gooding Jr.) is the Will Graham-esque hero who wants to help rather than use the...

Taller Than the Trees (2021)

Taller Than the Trees opens with what appears to be a quote from Henry David Thoreau from which the movie draws its title. I could launch into a whole tirade about that. I could complain that director Dean Tucker included the epigraph solely to make sure we know just how well read he is and...

After the Truth (1999)

After the Truth (original title Nichts als die Wahrheit) is as close as it gets to playing Devil’s advocate without having the defendant literally be Satan. Then again, Josef Mengele was worse than the Devil himself, because the Devil’s not real.  The main character is not the only one playing this dangerous game. Right or wrong,...

DogMan (2023)

I’d say that DogMan must be the first movie made exclusively for doggy audiences (not unlike Dethklok’s Dethwater album was intended for fish only), were it not that even dogs are too smart for this nonsense.  Douglas Munrow (Caleb Landry Jones) is a paraplegic drag queen who can communicate with dogs. In his own words,...

Our Son (2023)

Our Son reminds me of Cosmo Kramer calling marriage “a manmade prison.” In this case, it’s a man-on-manmade prison, but the film doesn’t dwell too much on gender or sexual orientation; this may not be the best movie about marriage equality, but it’s certainly the most honest in that it acknowledges that gay marriage sucks equally...

A Day Late and a Dollar Short (2014)

My first thought about A Day Late and a Dollar Short was, ‘a long time ago a good film could have been made with Ving Rhames, Mekhi Phifer and, in a pinch, even Whoopi Goldberg.’ Now, ten years is a long time. In fact, it’s a lifetime; a Lifetime Original Movie, that is — and...

Pain Hustlers (2023)

As far as Wolf of Wall Street knockoffs dealing with healthcare scams go, Pain Hustlers is more coherent and morally sound than the rambling, ignominious (and similarly titled) Body Brokers. That makes it better than Body Brokers (damning faint praise, I know), but it doesn’t necessarily make Pain Hustlers good in and of itself.  Right...

In the Fire

In the Fire is a triumph of ignorance over reason, which is not to say that co-writer/director Conor Allyn didn’t know what he was doing; first he denounces religious superstition, and then hits us with some paranormal claptrap, as if to insinuate, by way of a purely subjective contrast, that the latter isn't as big a...