Author Archive: Jerry Roberts

Jerry Roberts is a film critic and operator of two websites, Armchair Cinema and Armchair Oscars.

rss feed

Author's Website →

Birth\Rebirth (2023)

- Movie Rating -

Birth\Rebirth (2023)

About halfway through the horror-thriller Birth/Rebirth, I knew that I wanted to shake the hand of writer/director Laura Moss and her co-screenwriter Brenden O’Brien, not because I thought that I was seeing any kind of a masterpiece, but because it was nice to finally see at least one new horror movie that wasn’t lazy or […]

| August 26, 2023
×
Nathan-ism (2023)

- Movie Rating -

Nathan-ism (2023)

Nathan Hilu is an artist in his early 90s who sits hunched over his drawing pad switching between markers and crayons like a child with busy mind.  He talks incessantly, but what he has to say is fascinating.  Nathan was, in his youth, given a specific task by the United States Army, to act as […]

| August 26, 2023
×
Maestra (2023)

- Movie Rating -

Maestra (2023)

This review is part of my coverage of the 25th Annual Sidewalk Film Festival Maggie Contreras’ Maestra came to me as a happy accident.  At Birmingham Alabama’s Sidewalk Film Festival, I marked on my schedule in the 1pm slot to see Celine Song’s Past Lives, but I got in the wrong line.  I didn’t realize that […]

| August 26, 2023
×
Chasing Chasing Amy (2023)

- Movie Rating -

Chasing Chasing Amy (2023)

This review was part of my coverage of the 25th Annual Sidewalk Film Festival When Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy came out in 1996, I remember priding myself on loving it as a movie and for my own self-important progressiveness.  A proudly converted homophobic, I embraced the film’s openness about gays and lesbians even though I came […]

| August 26, 2023
×
Hello, Dankness (2023)

- Movie Rating -

Hello, Dankness (2023)

The value of experimental filmmaking is in challenging you to consider what they are trying to say, to challenge your cinematic comfort zones.  What is great about the work of the filmmaking duo known as “Soda Jerk” is that they not only challenge you but also play off of the contemporary notions of pirating images […]

| August 25, 2023
×
Art for Everybody (2023)

- Movie Rating -

Art for Everybody (2023)

This review is part of my coverage of the 25th Annual Sidewalk Film Festival. I never really gave much credence to the work of the late artist Thomas Kinkade.  Perhaps because of the volume of his work, I’ve always thought of him more as a brand name than an individual artist.  This, in spite of […]

| August 25, 2023
×
Blog: Killing Connie Casserole: How Stonewall Vilified ‘The Boys in the Band’

Blog: Killing Connie Casserole: How Stonewall Vilified ‘The Boys in the Band’

Between 1968, when playwright Mart Crowley wrote his off-Broadway hit “The Boys and the Band” and 1970, when William Friedkin turned it into a movie, there were the Stonewall riots.  For the health and well-being of the movie version, this was the worst thing that could have happened. In June of 1969, decades of abuse, […]

| August 9, 2023
×
BLOG: William Friedkin’s legacy of gamechangers: “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist”

BLOG: William Friedkin’s legacy of gamechangers: “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist”

In most cases, when a great director passes, the news outlets focus only on their most notable works while slighting the best work in their canon.  The case was rare with William Friedkin who died yesterday at the age of 87 and whose two heralded films were The French Connection and The Exorcist – not […]

| August 8, 2023
×