Joan Webster has known where she is going since day one. But it wasn’t until today that she knew the destination: Kiloran. It’s an island in the Scottish Hebrides, and she sets off to wed the man who waits for … Continue reading I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING!
Man-su has been laid off. Actually, it’s worse: Man-su’s middle-management position has been dissolved—made redundant by advancements in technology, corporate consolidation, and social devaluing of the craft it takes to make everyday objects. What’s a man to do in a … Continue reading NO OTHER CHOICE
The set-up is poetry. On one side of the table stands Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), Japan’s best table tennis player, a man who lost his hearing in the bombing of Tokyo and exists in a silence that brings only stillness. … Continue reading MARTY SUPREME
The visuals are stunning—that you can probably guess. Not all are perfect: too many, intentionally, have the herky-jerky quality of a first-person shooter video game. But others have a tactility that renders the descriptor “photo-realistic” inadequate. Most movies traffic in … Continue reading AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH
Merrily We Roll Along is neither a stage show nor is it cinema, but damn it’s good. Filmed over three performances in June 2024, not long after the Stephen Sondheim and George Furth penned musical won four Tonys in the … Continue reading MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG
Zootopia 2 is not a movie for the children in the audience; it’s for the adults. I’m sure little ones will enjoy it—there’s plenty of bright colors, silly moments, and chaotic chases to grab a kid’s attention—but in a movie … Continue reading ZOOTOPIA 2
It was a toothpaste commercial that brought Phillip Vandarpleog (Brendan Fraser) to Japan. That was seven years ago, and he’s been a working, if not struggling, actor since. Fraser plays Phillip as a man stuck in second gear, his face … Continue reading RENTAL FAMILY
No filmmaker working today makes movies like Guillermo del Toro. His are gothic affairs, full of love and sympathy for all creatures great and small, doomed and saved. The color palettes, even when monochromatically muted, have a garish quality to … Continue reading FRANKENSTEIN
On the screen: a green, bucolic, treeless landscape. Welcome to the Scottish isle of Jura. On the soundtrack: the shallow, ragged breath of someone struggling for one more day. These are the dying wheezes of writer George Orwell, born Eric … Continue reading ORWELL: 2+2=5
Michael J. Cinema 
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