by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent   Ridley Scott is back in action again as helmer of THE LAST DUEL, and this weekend at the Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater re-teamed stars Matt Damon and Ben Affleck from GOOD WILL HUNTING walked the red carpet with Jodie Comer and Harriet Walter, to lift the curtain on this “based on actual events” period action thriller. The film opens from 20th Century Studios on Oct. 15 and features Adam Driver at his very best....

Downsizing, review: Mini We Once in a while, a movie comes along that renews our faith in creative writing and the ability of cinema to rise above its own decadence. Maybe it took a dozen ‘shrink’, ‘little’ and ‘antman’ films, from 1957 to 2015, to inspire the writers of Downsizing, the title itself a pun, but the resulting effort has a fresh new feel about it. After setting up a very interesting premise and some smooth as silk spellbinding VFX, the film th...

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent For everybody who loved the DESCENDANTS with George Clooney, but thought it was too sad, or loved SIDEWAYS with Paul Giamatt but not that comedic mean streak of Alexander Payne, here comes something to really love. It’s called DOWNSIZING from Paramount, directed by Payne and co-written with Jim Taylor. This new comedy stars Matt Damon, Christoph Waltz, Kristen Wiig and Hong Chau from INHERENT VICE. If it sounds like “Honey, I ...

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent Guess what George Clooney and wife Amal named their twins? Romulus and Screamus. Just kidding, actually they have normal names: Ella (think Fitzgerald) and Alexander. But that’s old news. The breaking news is the images coming out of the Venice International Film Festival. It's not kid pics so much as the SUBURBICON photo call and red carpet shots. SUBURBICON is Clooney’s new adventure in filmmaking. It stars Matt Damon as ...

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent Raise your hand if you saw Al Pacino in "Danny Collins." Raise your hand if you saw Al Pacino in "Danny Collins" and actually liked it. Okay, kidding aside, The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) announced their nominations today at 5:15 am PST, which left a few of us critics cranky. But not without the usual clear-eyed objections to the Golden Globes' mash-up of categories. Is "Joy" a comedy? Is "T...

Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation, Review: Bond-Bourne amalgamation You couldn’t escape noticing that the Mumbai press preview of Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation was being held at the renovated Fun Republic. Two hours and eleven minutes later, you found out that the film was not about a 'nation', but about international rogues. That stated, for once, the expectations, unconsciously raised by a trivial similarity in the names of the venue and the film, were met. Inspiration for...

Interstellar, Review-- Gravity of the situation: Galactic Wormhole or Earthy Dust-bowl?   Mainly based on the scientific theories of Kip Thorne, Interstellar is a film that Steven Spielberg was to direct, and took about nine earthly years to land on planet IMAX (probably the last one to be shot on IMAX 15/70 format), courtesy spaceships Warner and Paramount. Thorne is an American Caltech physicist theoretical physicist who has written academic books on general relativity, colla...

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent Yesterday Christoph Waltz, a two-time Oscar winner, turned 58; and it’s a high probability that no one at his party told him he has made the most important movie of his career in The Zero Theorem, but he did. Anything Tilda Swinton is in, is usually great, this being no exception. Call it a Terry Gilliam magnum opus, once in a lifetime movie that proves all the math on the greatness of Brazil’s promise, but with extra gears both in i...

The 28th Annual SBIFF came to a close on Sunday, February 3rd. 

The 11 day festival screened nearly 200 hundred films, hosted various Academy Award nominees and brought out the latest creative forces in independent films, world wide.

 In an assembly such as this, the genre's were eclectic from sexual adventures (An Awkward Sexual Adventure) to meditation (Retreat), extreme sports (Discovering Mavericks) to nature (Revolution).  Features and shorts, both live and animated fille...

I have to confess, I watched "The People Speak" last night, from 8-9, but then I turned to A&E's "The Jackson's: A Family Dynasty" Reality Show premiere ;) What I did see of "The People Speak" makes me want to see it in its entirety, yet still I went to bed without checking to see if they were going to do an encore performance last night on The History Channel, which they did at midnight, so I missed rec...

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