Three Rules of Life: Never play cards with a guy named Doc.Never eat at a restaurant called Mom?sNever sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own. Nelson Algren was one of the key writers of Post-World War II America. His writing was as plain-spoken as...
?Try not to run away from stuff that isn?t there.? Hudson, the first feature film from Sean Daniel Cunningham, received a fair number of awards from film festivals. It is certainly the kind of film that festival audiences like to find?a sweet, feel good story from a...
Paul Schrader?s The Card Counter is the story of a solitary man hiding from the world. Or more precisely, a man hiding from the sin and guilt that he carries with him. ?William Tell? (Oscar Isaac) plays cards for a living. He?s very good at it. He knows...
Last Night in Rozzie, from director Sean Gannet, opens with a chaotic memory of an event that happened in 1994. We can?t really tell what?s happening, but slowly we learn what happened that night and the effect it had on the two boys involved?and the ripples it...
We may think that a love story is a love story. They meet. They clash. They become friends. They fall out. They reconcile. Life is beautiful. Those are the typical beats in such a story. They are all there in 23 Walks, written and directed by Paul Morrison, but it all...
For many people, Tammy Faye Bakker is probably best known for being the butt of jokes and SNL skits. Her outlandish makeup was a trademark that was easy to satirize, as was her singing and onscreen demeanor. But what of the person behind all that? The Eyes of Tammy...
?As much love as you put in to them, they?re going to give that back to you.? My Heroes Were Cowboys, a short documentary (running time: 22 minutes) from Tyler Greco, is the story of what we have come to think of as a horse whisperer. He is a man who has the ability...
What does ?Swiss bank? bring to mind? A numbered account? Secrecy about ill-gotten gains? Do you think of politics and class warfare? Azor, from Swiss director Andreas Fontana, shows us a bit of that behind the curtain world. Sure, its about money, but even more, it...
[NOTE: I wrote this review in 2008 after seeing the film at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, expecting to publish it when it was released in the US. However, the film never got a release. I?ve often wondered what happened to it in all those years. Now it...