the @popcollin reviews

Fear not. French filmmaker Ladj Ly’s first feature is not another remake of Victor Hugo’s sprawling novel or its long-running, mawkish musical. What the they do share, though, is a location (the Parisian slums of Montfermeil) and a spirit (authority, bad—hoi polloi, good) that perfectly brings the classic tome to […]

Winner of the Grand Prize at the 2019 Arizona International Film Festival a year ago, writer-director Eddie Mensore’s Mine 9 finally gets its wide release this week (thank you, Netflix!) Following in the footsteps of 2015’s The 33 (about the 2010 real-life Chilean Mine collapse), Mensore’s utterly captivating and terrifying film isn’t based on […]

Pedophilia. Homosexuality. Racism. Not exactly the fodder for the world’s smartest comedy, but don’t tell Shane Mack. The first-time screenwriter thinks they’re all hilarious, and even more so (apparently) when the jokes come from the ridiculously foul mouth of a 12-year-old. Coffee & Kareem, the latest Netflix original, tries so hard […]

Lest you need any further reminder that it can be a little stifling and claustrophobic to remain sheltered in-place in your suburban home and forced to interact with the children you’re not used to having underfoot all day/every day, Saban Films is pleased to offer Vivarium. Obviously the studio had […]

Back in 2006, 10-year-old Liana Liberato and her 13-year-old best friend Hannah Marks were profiled in The New York Times Magazine article “Hollywood Elementary” about pre-teens struggling to make it in show business. Ten years later, each with a solid resume under their belt, Marks cast Liberato in her directorial debut, the […]

The name Michelle Payne is little known (if at all) outside of Australia, but the pioneering jockey who broke into the male-dominated sport of horse racing and then became the first (and still only) woman to win the signature Melbourne Cup is getting her due at the cineplex. (Well—via video […]

How is it that movies about stand-up comedians are often among the more melancholy and dark things out there? From 1982’s The King of Comedy all the way through to last year’s Joker (with pit stops at Punchline and Funny People along the way), the struggling stand-up has become the poster child for the sorrowful forced re-examination of […]