The Best Picture of 1987 is....."The Last Emperor." This is director Bernardo Bertolucci's epic story of Puyi, the final emperor of China. This cinematic masterpiece won nine Oscars. Born in 1906, Puyi's fascinating life covered the history of modern China, from his brief [..]

The Best Picture of 1988 is....."Rain Man." The story has Tom Cruise playing a Los Angeles car salesman who learns that his father in Cincinnati has passed away. Upon arrival in Ohio, he learns that his father's three million dollar estate has been left to an [..]

Major movie stars, a crime on a military base, and a photogenic locale in San Francisco are all factors that make "The Presidio" a decent ninety minutes of entertainment. Military police officer Patti Jean Lynch (Janette Goldstein) is killed while investigating a break-in [..]

"Meg 2: The Trench" is an action-adventure movie about a group of scientists whose explorations of the deepest part of the ocean are interrupted by some giant sea creatures. They must escape by walking along the floor of the sea! Director Ben Wheatley ("Rebecca" 2020) put [..]

"The Retirement Plan" is a comedy crime thriller movie about a woman in New York City who must send her daughter to her retired father in the Cayman Islands when she gets into trouble with criminals. Director-screenwriter Tim Brown has concocted a truly humorous thriller that has good [..]

"The Miracle Club" is an Irish comedy-drama movie about a group of three women and a boy from Dublin on a pilgrimage to Lourdes in France. They seek miracles for health conditions but find healing in unexpected ways. Director Thaddeus O'Sullivan put together this feel-good and [..]

Jackie Chan stars as a martial arts master and Cantonese folk hero Wong Fei-hung in "The Legend of Drunken Master." Director Lau Kar-leung masterfully blends different fighting styles into the action of the film, including "drunken boxing," invented just for the original "Drunken Master" movie of 1978 [..]

"Jungle Fever" is a romantic drama film that explores the beginning and the end of an extramarital interracial relationship set in the urban backdrop of New York City. Producer-director-screenwriter Spike Lee explores the relationship from racial, marital, religious, moral, and social angles, forthrightly depicting reactions of people, [..]

"Punchline" shows that the stand-up comedy business is not all laughs. This mostly drama-based film tells the story of a talented young comic who helps a housewife break into a career as a comedian. There is a hint of "A Star is Born" (1937, 1954, 1976, [..]

Holiday hilarity prevails in "Scrooged," producer-director Richard Donner's updated version of "A Christmas Carol," first published by Charles Dickens in 1843. Bill Murray plays an autocratic head of a television network who gets visits from the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. We all know [..]