Breaking News in Yuba County, Review: Last one standing gets the millions It’s genre-defying film, with a most unlikely protagonist, and several parallel tracks, all intertwined. Re-affirming the myth that, in America, anybody can get away with anything, and that killing and violence are about as common as pizza and burgers, Breaking News in Yuba County makes a messed-up attempt to say that amidst all this mayhem, loyalty to your wife and love for her are values worth cherishing. But it...

Wonder Park, Review: Who said it can’t be done? Released in the USA with a PG certificate, Wonder Park is about an imaginary amusement park created by the imagination of a 10-year old girl and her mother.  It tweaks logic and science to create fantastical rides and talking animals, making conventional amusement parks look like child’s play. It’s good holiday viewing for the 5-12 age-group, with a riot of colours and exciting thrills, causing adrenaline rushes, with the ...

The Spy Who Dumped Me, Review: Jumped, Pumped, Slumped, Stumped Pre-credit scenes à la James Bond, the JB theme variation in a couple of scenes and a title that is a clear Ian Fleming lift—remember The Spy Who Loved me? This one is an action comedy, with both components in equal measure. Action is fast and furious and the comedy punctuates the thrills, with the help of a comedians+mimics cast. The Spy Who Dumped Me is funny enough to make you chuckle and laugh at regular interval...

A Bad Moms Christmas, review: Santa is a stripper They don’t bother giving any back-stories, and none are needed in this sequel to the 2016 outing. Christmas and Bad Mom specialists (Bad Dads is coming) Jon Lucas and Scott Moore team-up once again to debrief what Christmas and happiness is all about, and span it across three generations of American families. A Bad Moms Christmas peppers its script with a dozen stereo-types, and then proceeds to revel in ripping them apart, in the most i...

The Black Prince who walked the Red Carpet at Cannes Very little is known about Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of Punjab with his capital at Lahore, who is said to have gifted the invaluable Koh-i-Noor diamond to Queen Victoria, while a young boy. Time and again, a lobby is raised in India to try and get it back from Britain, only to fizzle out. Dalip Singh remains an enigmatic figure, a missing chapter from India’s colonial history. All that is set to change with oncoming rel...

  Jupiter Ascending, Review: ..and the Earth goes to... Delayed for over seven months beyond its scheduled release, the Wachowskis’ Jupiter Ascending released this week in India and many other territories. The Wachowskis are writers, producers, and directors, most famous for creating The Matrix series. Their last two films, Cloud Atlas and Speed Racer, tanked at the box office. Jupiter Ascending marks the siblings’ long-awaited return to the science-fiction genre. Named after ...

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent There are many reasons to wonder silently about the HFPA and their Golden Globe Awards, uhm, maybe the NSA knows more than some of us. (But not likely.) Last year Theo Kingma took the helm, and most of us hoped for the best after the sale to Peter Guber and friends.  What if the HFPA, founded in 1947, came back to its core directive as a charitable institution and gathering place for international journalists in Hollywood? Once w...