'Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind': Film Review

Also Read: How Larry Kramer Pulled Off the First Film With Frontal Male Nudity - Back in 1969The film is certainly entertaining and even educational, with filmmakers and actors like Peter Bogdanovich, Malcolm McDowell, Amy Heckerling and Sean Young offering revealing (pardon the pun) looks at their adventures on the front lines.

Celebrity Snoop Dogs? Replaying all of Downton Abbey from the start? The Luminaries? Compared to some of what’s been served up lately, Derren Brown: 20 Years of Mind Control is a rich imaginative feast. The live trick at the start and the repeated vintage trick at the end weren’t available to previewers, but the clip show that makes up the meat of the evening was a 90-minute celebration of Britain’s preeminent mind control jockey.

Also Read: 'Spree' Star Joe Keery on His 'Highly Misguided' Character's Pursuit of Viral Fame (Video)The movie is kind of fun if low-budget horror appeals to you. And the way the film is shot — jumping from one small screen to another and piling different social-media windows in the frame so you can read comments as you watch the action — can be a sometimes dizzying kick.

Also Read: Is 'Greyhound' Based on a True Story?The film, which is being released in some theaters (and virtual theaters) on the Aug. 14 anniversary, will also air on the Discovery Channel on Labor Day weekend, which is closer to the Sep.

When Netflix began promoting its latest entry in the summer-that-never-was blockbuster stakes, Project Power, it was hard to suppress an eye-roll of weary puzzlement at the fanboys eager to slam it as lame and derivative. Sure, it has conceptual similarities to the Bradley Cooper vehicle Limitless, to DC Comics property Hourman, to Image Comics'War Heroes.

A Russia-set creature feature whose intensely serious tone belies some awfully silly stuff in its plot, Egor Abramenko's Sputnik locks an Alien-inspired parasite up in the steppes of Kazakhstan and waits to see if humans can figure out how to handle it. Suffering a bit in the charisma department, the film moves sluggishly for the hour or so that it takes to get on its feet, finally giving its humans something interesting to do.

Teen love proves stronger than death in Endless, Scott Speer's tale of a young man (Nicholas Hamilton) who dies in a car crash, but whose spirit clings to Earth to comfort his grieving girlfriend (Alexandra Shipp).

The title may sound incendiary, something left over from the Russ Meyer era, but Danny Wolf’s Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies turns out to be informative and even-handed as well as entertaining. Meyer’s movies are inevitably included in this freewheeling documentary survey of nudity from the silent era to the present.

He's been described as "fashion's invisible man" and the "Banksy of fashion." And true to that reputation, famed designer Martin Margiela doesn't deign to show his face in Reiner Holzemer's laudatory documentary. Like the unseen but heard Marlene Dietrich in Maximilian Schell's Marlene, Margiela protects his privacy while at the same time delivering an emotionally self-probing account of his life and career in Martin Margiela: In His Own Words.

elections. Alumni include Bill Clinton, Neil Armstrong, Bruce Springsteen, Rush Limbaugh, Jon Bon Jovi, Roger Ebert, Roger Ailes, James Gandolfini and Dick Cheney, just to name a few.

It's sometimes possible for a story to have an emotional impact even when there's nary an original element in it. Such is the case with the new indie drama written and directed by Bobby Roth.

Serving as a much-belated sequel to the 2007 Australian sleeper hit “Black Water,” director Andrew Traucki’s B-movie influenced follow-up, the blandly titled but effectively executed “Black Water: Abyss” is lean killer crocodile film that upgrades the appropriately lo-fi aesthetic of the original, replacing the expansive swamp setting with a claustrophobic cave descent.

The producers of this new version of Frances Hodgson Burnett's enduring 1911 children's literature classic, The Secret Garden, couldn't possibly have guessed their film would open five months into pandemic lockdown, when many children have been climbing the walls in isolation. That timing gives the beloved fable of imagination, liberation and rebirth renewed enchantment.

Ariana Grande’s ‘Thank U, Next’ and ‘7 Rings’ (her work with the superstar’s most recent album, also titled ‘Thank U, Next’, won her no less than four Grammy nominations last year), and has collaborated with artists as varied as Fifth Harmony and Nas since the early ‘10s.

Black,” according to its director and star, Beyoncé. (Or is that Beyoncé Knowles-Carter? She takes the last name for her director’s credit, but goes first-name only for her starring credit.)But it’s unlikely that too many fans will flock to Disney+ for altered semantics.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticIn the opening scene of “Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind,” a highly enjoyable documentary about the folk-pop troubadour of Canada, Lightfoot, now 81, sits at home with his wife, Kim, and watches clips of himself on Canadian television singing the 1965 song “For Lovin’ Me,” an ode to the arrogant adulterer he once was. Back when he wrote the song, Lightfoot was married, with a couple of kids.

Coming off as warm and affectionate as its protagonist, “Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind” is a breezy introduction to one of Canada’s most famous singer/songwriters. Chronologically working through Lightfoot’s storied, and seven decades-long, career, directors Martha Kohoe and Joan Tosoni intermix Lightfoot’s own recollection with traditional talking heads, including contemporary musicians and modern fans of his work.

Maggie Lee Chief Asia Film CriticWho would have thought a romantic comedy on the pain of being different could become such ironic and timely viewing in a global pandemic? In “I Weirdo,” a kooky and innovative debut by Taiwanese writer-director Liao Ming-yi, a couple with OCD trying to fit in to so-called “normal” society now looks like social-distancing heroes in our Covid-hit, locked-down lives. Shot and edited by Liao using the iPhone XS Max, the production looks no less vibrant for it.