Category: Sammie Purcell

“The Social Reckoning” is billed as a sequel to “The Social Network,” the 2010 masterpiece written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher, starring Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook (now Meta) CEO Mark Zuckerberg – a man who built a massive connection network despite having no idea how to connect with real, actual people.  This […]

Since 2024, there have been four feature film adaptations of Colleen Hoover novels. But the most recent, “Verity,” is a bit of a different animal than Hoover’s standard romantic fare. Directed by Michael Showalter with a screenplay from Nick Antosca, “Verity” stars Dakota Johnson as Lowen Ashleigh (continuing the trend of Colleen Hoover protagonists with […]

There is a moment early on in “Resident Evil” when Bryan (Austin Abrams) is on the run from his first zombie – but the chase isn’t taking him very far.  In this early sequence, Bryan, cornered up against a cop car by the bloody, screeching creature, panics and starts to frantically circle the car. The […]

Lately, there’s been a run of movie sequels aimed at women of my generation.“Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.” “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” “Freakier Friday” And now, “Practical Magic 2.”  Some of these movies are better than others, and I – again, the target audience – have had a good time at most of […]

“Dear You,” directed by Lan Hongchun, is a historical film centering around qiaopi, or letters and money sent by Chinese workers overseas back to their families on the mainland – specifically, qiaopi sent by Teochew immigrants in Southeast Asia throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.  The film, which is spoken primarily in Teochew and features […]

In its first half hour, “The Dog Stars” – true to its name – spends a good bit of time showing us Jacob Elordi spending time with a dog.  After a deadly pandemic ravages the world, Hig (Elordi) and his trusted dog Jasper are some of the few remaining survivors left. In the years since […]

Anthony Bourdain had a discerning eye.  Anyone who has watched him on “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown,” or read his musings in “Kitchen Confidential,” can see that. Part of what made Bourdain so fun to watch was his sense of curiosity – about people, about the world, about food, and the intersections between those things. His […]

“One Night Only” starts with a banner of text explaining its premise: three years ago, pre-marital sex was outlawed in the United States. “It’s been a lot,” reads the text. I think I can safely say, if this were to actually happen, that would be the understatement of the year.  If you’re like me (or […]

I have a patchy relationship with Josh Greenbaum-directed narrative comedies. In 2021, he directed the Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo vehicle “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,”  an undersung hero of the absurdist comedy oeuvre. A couple of years later, we got the CGI dog comedy “Strays” – a far less successful outing, to […]

In waiting for Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey,” I’ve felt a lot of anticipation – as I’m sure many of us have – for certain set pieces. Whether it be Odysseus’s encounter with the man-eating cyclops Polyphemus, or with Charybdis and Scylla in the ocean, there’s a certain excitement in knowing that Nolan, a […]

“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think about ‘The Wizard of Oz.’” David Lynch once said this during a Q&A at the New York Film Festival. And looking through his filmography, pretty much every single film can be connected back to the 1939 classic, in ways both obvious and subtle.  Well, […]

In an interview with IndieWire last week, “Supergirl” director Craig Gillespie said that the tone of his film will be very different from James Gunn’s “Superman” – the first film in Warner Bros. relaunch of the new DC Universe. Gillespie said audiences could expect less “Guardians of the Galaxy” and more Mad Max – “The […]

Right off the bat, “Girls Like Girls” deals in the familiar conventions of coming-of-age stories. We meet our protagonist, Coley (Maya da Costa), riding her bike through the wooded streets of rural Oregon – wind softly tousling her hair, the breeze only a slight reprieve from the oppressive heat of summer. Immediately, the film has […]

If you’re an action fan, the phrase “fight choreography” probably means something to you. But it’s been a minute since I’ve seen a movie commit to the idea of fighting as dance as much as Kenji Tanigaki’s “The Furious.” The movement is like ballet, operatic, almost – just with more gore.  The Hong Kong action […]

Imagine you’re the lead singer of a wedding band – you were once filled with rock and roll dreams of headlining Madison Square Garden, but that dream has long passed you by. But one night, a famous pop star shows up at the wedding you’re playing, and you strike up a conversation after your set. […]

Have you ever seen something ostensibly normal – say, three shopping carts in the middle of an abandoned parking lot, or an empty, kitschy furniture store – and stared at it just a little too long? Long enough that the banality of it all suddenly becomes sinister, or the layout suddenly looks slightly off? In 2019, […]

“Hamlet” might be one of the most adapted properties of all time. When taking stock of those adaptations, the story mostly stays the same, but the focus usually changes.  It all comes down to preference – maybe you’re like Laurence Olivier, concentrating mostly on the psychology of the character and fascinated by his Oedipus complex […]

Early on in “The Drama,” Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya) are practicing for the first dance at their wedding. They’re doing one of those old-timey, heavily choreographed routines. You know the type – the kind where you’re too busy thinking about the next step to worry about the fact that everyone is watching you […]

If there’s one thing you should know about the Fruits, it’s that they worship Marilyn Monroe like she was God herself.  This is one of the running gags in Meredith Alloway’s new film, “Forbidden Fruits,” written by Alloway and Lily Houghton and based on Houghton’s 2019 play. The Fruits – a witchy sisterhood of mall […]

There is a long, storied history to melodrama that stretches back centuries – “Wuthering Heights,” Douglas Sirk movies, you name it. The definition of melodrama necessitates exaggeration and excitement, sweeping emotions and grand gestures. But I’ve always found that melodrama works best when those emotions are rooted in something a little more grounded. In Sirk’s […]