'Raining in the Mountain' ('Kong Shan Ling Yu'): Film Review

For those of us old enough to remember, in 1995 the majority of teenagers in the developed world were almost as ignorant and bigoted as their parents about gender and sexual identity — or at least decidedly not the enlightened folk most Gen-Z kids seem to be these days.

Viola Davis burns a hole in the screen projecting the indomitable pride and hard-won self-worth of the legendary early 20th century blues singer named in the title of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, one of 10 plays that comprise August Wilson's epic cycle depicting 100 years of African American experience. But it's Chadwick Boseman as a cocky trumpeter brutally demeaned by the white recording industry who delivers the most explosive thunder and searing pain.

Watch Video: 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' Trailer: Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman Sing the BluesMa’s band, who arrives at the studio well before she does, has its own internal struggles: veterans Toledo (Turman) and bandleader Cutler (Domingo) are there to follow Ma’s lead and to give her what she wants, no questions asked, while brash and talented horn player Levee (Boseman) tries to sprinkle jazz riffs into existing songs while arranging new versions of other ones over Ma’s objections.

Not to take anything away from filmmaker Dana Nachman, but her new documentary certainly benefits from the timing of its release. The film focuses on the 107-year-old Operation Santa program run by the U.S.

When it comes to baseball sayings that apply to real life, the term "swinging for the fences" couldn’t be more suitable for the three major-league hopefuls at the heart of Sami Khan and Michael Gassert’s gripping new sports documentary, The Last Out.

There's one question you're likely to ask yourself while watching Nick Sarkisov's drama about the contentious relationship between an egomaniacal MMA fighter and his sensitive, 18-year-old son: Who the hell is Stephen Dorff's trainer and how much does he charge? That's because it's otherwise hard to sustain interest over the course of Embattled, in which Dorff plays the lead role of the monstrously self-absorbed Cash.

In one of the more amusingly uncharitable moments of a character whose brittle undercarriage keeps peeking through the fastidiously composed veneer of the warm, welcoming homemaker, Mary Steenburgen says as her daughter's guest for the holidays stomps angrily out of the room, "She is very heavy-footed." Fortunately, the opposite applies to co-writer and director Clea DuVall; her light touch with both comedy and drama is essential to what makes Happiest Season so captivating.

“Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas” a decade ago — and bemoaned the lack of LGBT stories being told in the seasonal sub-genre — I never could have predicted the bumper crop of 2020, which is offering queer-centric (or at least gay-inclusive) new movies from Lifetime, Hallmark, Paramount Network, and Netflix, as well as the arrival of “Happiest Season,” an all-star Christmas comedy with a major studio behind it.

When Gary Duncan was arrested on trumped-up charges, essentially for being Black, his situation was hardly unique. But his readiness to fight the bogus case was nothing short of heroic, especially in 1966 Plaquemines Parish, near New Orleans, part of a region that one of the interviewees in Nancy Buirski's film calls a "totalitarian nation." The word "totalitarian" is uttered several times in A Crime on the Bayou, and on the evidence of this real-life drama, it isn't hyperbole.

A movie made for young men whose parents or girlfriends have insisted they put down their gaming consoles for one goddamn night or it's over, Dimitri Logothetis' Jiu Jitsu has all the barely-motivated action and sci-fi trappings of a middling videogame and, well, at least a little of the dramatic value. Reteaming with Alain Moussi, star of his previous film Kickboxer: Retaliation, Logothetis finds nearly none of that film's tongue-in-cheek, pulpy appeal (modest though it was).

They should have revived the American International or New World Pictures logo to distribute Chad Faust's Southern Gothic noir. The film would have fit in perfectly paired as a '70s-era double feature with the likes of Macon County Line and Jackson County Jail, best seen at a drive-in on a hot summer night.

In her 60-some years on Earth, Lorine Padilla has seen, done and endured enough to fill several lifetimes.

If nothing else, director Stanley Tong and martial arts superstar Jackie Chan’s latest effort, Vanguard, proves the law of diminishing returns. Not too long ago a Chan film guaranteed an entertaining time at the movies and heaps of awe at what the human body could endure.

Turkish origins to the Icelandic legend of the Yule Cat (Jólakötturinn, who goes by “Jola” for short here) to the Star of Bethlehem itself.Watch Video: Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn Say Christmas Is 'Doomed' Forever in 'The Christmas Chronicles 2' TrailerAlso part of the holiday’s history is Belsnickel, one of Santa’s gift-giving antecedents, but in “Christmas Chronicles 2,” Belsnickel (Julian Dennison, “Deadpool 2”) is Santa’s former right-hand elf, so embittered by the big man’s devotion to

The kind of story at the heart of Baby God is sadly familiar from news reports. As text at the end of the documentary points out, "More than two dozen U.S.

Though he's adept enough at sleight-of-hand and other stage trickery to have earned the admiration of people like Ricky Jay, Penn & Teller and David Blaine, performer Derek DelGaudio bristles at the term "magician." Anyone inclined to think that makes him pretentious can look to Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself, in which Frank Oz documents the singular 2017 off-Broadway show (also directed by Oz) that embodies his ideal: Here, the patter employed by some ambitious illusionists becomes full-blown

The lame-duck days of America's reality-TV presidency are an appropriate time for a documentary about Tekashi69, the rainbow-haired rapper willing to say or do any stupid thing in order to keep the world's eyes on him. In the view of Vikram Gandhi's 69: The Saga of Danny Hernandez, music is nearly entirely beside the point: Those who don't know the songs that drew millions of YouTube streams will barely hear them here, and that's probably just as well.

Rebecca Danigelis was a 75-year-old housekeeping supervisor at a hotel when she was fired. She had $600 in savings and had cashed in her 401K to send her younger son, Sian-Pierre Regis, to college.

In 1976 Clive Cussler published Raise the Titanic!, a novel in which a team of undersea adventurers attempted to bring the famous shipwreck to the surface and recover its treasures. But Cussler's hero Dirk Pitt was late to this game: For the previous six or seven years, the CIA had been secretly attempting something similar in the real world, with a much more dangerous treasure in mind.