When the global pandemic arrived in Chico, Pageant Theatre owner Miles Montalbano figured it would pass by quickly. He and his 2020 crew were looking forward to celebrating the Pageant’s 40th anniversary in March. “We […]
Okay, first things first. An abundance of good stuff found its way into the Stream & Dream screening room during 2021. And the best of it, as of the penultimate week of December, looks like […]
With the streaming season stretching on, here are some of the most recent film highlights. Passing (Netflix) A deft and at times brilliant adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, Passing is remarkable in that respect […]
Stray, a ruggedly poetic documentary about stray dogs in Istanbul, has some extraordinary moments of eerie emotion in it, including one near the finish that’s as haunting and amazing as anything I’ve encountered in movies […]
In the film Cry Macho, nonagenarian Clint Eastwood (who directs as well) plays a septuagenarian, a worn-out old cowboy who’s sent to retrieve his benefactor’s estranged (and apparently abused) adolescent son from the clutches of […]
In A Life for a Kiss, a 13-minute western made in 1912, a lone bandit with a posse on his trail takes a brief detour to get a drink of water at a small tree-shaded […]
I’ve been enjoying the peculiar freedoms of “streaming in place,” but I’ve also been finding that, as a movie reviewer, the paths I’ve been following seem increasingly personal and idiosyncratic. Without the regimen of weekly […]
Some screen-time notes from another very interesting month of streaming in place: At first, I was kinda miffed that the Oscarizers ignored First Cow. But, after throwing a fistful of popcorn at our flatscreen, it […]
I thought I might review the Super Bowl broadcast back in February, but my interest in all that began to flag even before the usual excesses of the halftime blowout. Curiously, the one thing that […]
In News of the World, the new Tom Hanks picture, there’s plenty of ferocious action and a good deal of impressive speechifying, but much of what’s best in it occurs in quiet moments in which […]
This past year of “streaming in place” provided at least some much-needed respite from the multiple miseries, large and small, of the times in which we find ourselves. There was, however, little that was “normal” […]
Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, an offbeat western that’s probably slipped under most people’s radar, strikes me as one of the most odd and rewarding American movies of the year. A whole range of peculiarities are […]
It almost goes without saying that moviegoing in this highly fraught year continues to be mostly a matter of “streaming in place.” Be that as it may, perhaps a little more could be said, and […]
Since teaching her last class at Chico State in June 2018, Janja Lalich—professor emerita of sociology and a preeminent expert on cults—has not eased her way into retirement. “I’m actually way too busy,” she told […]
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