Mid90s (Blu-ray) <small>by Olie Coen</small><hr /> Director: Jonah Hill Starring: Sunny Suljic, Lucas Hedges, Katherine Waterston Year: 2018 13-year-old Millennials have Eighth Grade, 17-year-old Xennials have Lady Bird, and now teenage Gen-Xers have Mid90s, a look at the skate life of young Los Angelinos as the 1900s ended without life becoming the dreamscape that was promised. Angst and disappointment were hallmarks of growing up in this decade, as were drugs and lost opportunities, and it's all captured here on the streets of LA, where every day is a struggle and all you've really got is your board. I might have been in a nerd ...Read the entire review »

The Revolt of the Slaves (Blu-ray) <small>by Stuart Galbraith IV</small><hr /> Looking at the cover art, The Revolt of the Slaves (La rivolta degli schiav, 1960) looks like an ordinary peplum, that sub-genre of sword-and-sandal popular in Italy from the late 1950s through about 1965, when Italian filmmakers abruptly shifted their energies toward Spaghetti Westerns. With Hollywood star Rhonda Fleming in the cast, I was expecting something along the lines of fun-but-trashy peplum such as Goliath and the Dragon (1960), a Hercules movie with imported stars Broderick Crawford and Mark Forest. Instead, The Revolt of the Slaves turns out to be a different breed of Euro-spectacle. The story, adapted from Irish Cardinal Nicholas Patrick Wiseman's 1854 novel Fabiola, is actually a biblical epic along the lines of The Robe (1953). A lavish, nearly three-hour Italian-French adaptation of Fabiola, starring Michele Morgan and Mic...Read the entire review »

Mary Poppins Returns <small>by Olie Coen</small><hr /> Director: Rob Marshall Starring: Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw Year: 2018 Mary Poppins is the quintessential Disney musical, the classic of classics that showed us what entertainment could be. The fact that Mary Poppins Returns is a throwback to that style has thrown critics for a loop, as they scramble to justify their desire to enjoy a film they feel they should and the confusion brought on by a modern movie attempting an old school format. This isn't a Beauty and the Beast remake, this isn't a look from another angle like <a href="http://archeravenue.net/m...Read the entire review »