Sean Connery is going to voice-act James Bond in a video game based on From Russia With Love? A cool idea in concept, but there’s a hangup: that wonderfully smooth, soothing, almost musical voice that Connery had in 1963 when the film was first released doesn’t exist any more. The voice of any 74 year old man is going to sound softer and gurglier and generally less commanding than the one he had when he was 32 or 33, which was Connery’s age when he starred in the second 007 film. (There’s an obvious difference between the voice of the young Tony Curtis in Spartacus and the 65 year-old Curtis who looped himself for the “snails and oysters” scene in the 1991 restored version of that film.) So unless Connery’s voice can be digitally tweaked to made to sound younger, the idea is full of beans. But hey, Sean gets a nice paycheck and Electronic Arts gets to say they’re bringing Connery back to Bond fold and blah, blah. Just don’t come complaining to me when you buy the game and it feels vaguely like a rip.

“Not happening…way too laid back…zero narrative urgency,” I was muttering from the get-go. Basically the sixth episode of White Lotus Thai SERIOUSLY disappoints. Puttering around, way too slow. Things inch along but it’s all “woozy guilty lying aftermath to the big party night” stuff. Glacial pace…waiting, waiting. I was told...
I finally saw Walter Salles' I'm Still Here two days ago in Ojai. It's obviously an absorbing, very well-crafted, fact-based poltical drama, and yes, Fernanda Torres carries the whole thing on her shoulders. Superb actress. Fully deserving of her Best Actress nomination. But as good as it basically is...
After three-plus-years of delay and fiddling around, Bernard McMahon's Becoming Led Zeppelin, an obsequious 2021 doc about the early glory days of arguably the greatest metal-rock band of all time, is opening in IMAX today in roughly 200 theaters. Sony Pictures Classics is distributing. All I can say is, it...
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall's Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year's Telluride Film Festival, is a truly first-rate two-hander -- a pure-dialogue, character-revealing, heart-to-heart talkfest that knows what it's doing and ends sublimely. Yes, it all happens inside a Yellow Cab on...
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when and how did Martin Lawrence become Oliver Hardy? He’s funny in that bug-eyed, space-cadet way… 7:55 pm: And now it’s all cartel bad guys, ice-cold vibes, hard bullets, bad business,...

The Kamala surge is, I believe, mainly about two things — (a) people feeling lit up or joyful about being...
Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner's Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg's tastiest and wickedest film -- intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...