As “Summer of 85” opens, our narrator, 16-year-old Alex (Félix Lefebvre) expresses an interest in death “with a capital D.” His voice sounds disinterested, which is the first sign of trouble as we have to listen to him for the entire movie. The second sign of trouble occurs when Alex warns us that we might…

“Rita Moreno: Just A Girl Who Decided To Go For It,” a documentary directed by Puerto Rican documentary filmmaker Mariem Pérez Riera, is a mash note to the multitalented force of nature that is Rita Moreno—actress, singer, dancer, and first Latina to achieve the Triple Crown of acting awards (winning a Tony, an Emmy, and…

It was the 1940s. My father, who was around 11 or 12, would walk along the railroad tracks between Elon, North Carolina and the neighboring town, Gibsonville, to catch a movie. He was returning home one afternoon when, from a ramshackle porch set back from the tracks, a white boy around his age shouted at…

“Fatherhood” is based on Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss and Love by Matthew Logelin. I have not read this book nor had I ever heard of Logelin. If he sounds familiar to you, it’s because he had a very popular blog back in 2008 where he covered the sudden death of his wife,…

In the last few decades, films about adolescent girls in dark sexual situations have basically become their own genre, ushered in by the explosive release of Catherine Brieillat’s “Fat Girl” in 2001. The blueprint of these stories can be traced back to the work of Larry Clark and Harmony Korine in the 1990s, movies that display…

The second virtual panel for Black Writers Week premieres Friday, June 18th, at 9am CT/7am PT on The RogerEbert.com YouTube page. The panel is entitled “Whose Gaze: A Roundtable of Black Film Critics at the Movies,” and features the following distinguished panelists: Sarah-Tai Black, co-host of Netflix’s Black Film School; Emmanuel Noisette, author/creator of E-Man’s Movie Reviews; Tambay Obenson, founder of…