Joe Leydon: Last News

Joe Leydon Film Critic Based on the real-life experiences of co-writer and co-executive producer Nathaniel Deen, who appears at the end to bestow his approval on the dramatization and invite the audience to take its lessons to heart, “Brave the Dark” is a low-key inspirational indie that sensitively elicits empathy and sympathy without ever pushing too hard or simplifying complexities. Short on surprises but brimming with warm-hearted insight, the film may have a few too many mildly edgy elements to qualify as family-friendly entertainment suitable for all ages.

Joe Leydon Film Critic In recent years, there have been a number of dramas and documentaries detailing the appalling mistreatment of Native American children forcibly held in church- and state-run Indian Boarding Schools — ranging from the Taylor Sheridan-produced “1923” to the Oscar-nominated “Sugarcane” — for such historical overviews to comprise a subgenre. Such eye-opening depictions of 19th and 20th-century atrocities, much like the contemporary accounts on the issue of Missing or Murdered Indigenous Women, are not merely instructive, but necessary.

Joe Leydon Film Critic During my interview a while back with a director of small-budget Westerns, he explained to me that if you keep your costs down low enough and, better still, cast a recognizable character actor or country music star — not a superstar, but someone recognizable — to promote in packaging and advertising, you could turn a profit just on DVD and Blu-ray sales. “You do it right,” he said, “and you make your money back from Redbox and big-box stores.

Christopher Vourlias You would have been hard-pressed to find a timelier film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival than “Free Leonard Peltier,” directors Jesse Short Bull and David France’s documentary about the Native American activist who spent nearly 50 years in prison for the murder of two federal agents, a crime he insists he didn’t commit. Just days ahead of the film’s Park City premiere, Peltier received clemency from President Joe Biden in one of his last acts before leaving office, sending the filmmakers back to the cutting room to hurriedly incorporate new material into their documentary.

Joe Leydon Film Critic Anyone who’s ever been skeptical about the safety of capitalizing on cryptocurrency will have their worst suspicions confirmed by “Cold Wallet,” a shrewd and suspenseful thriller about three would-be working-class vigilantes determined to retrieve their investments from an amoral scammer. Right from the start, director Cutter Hodierne develops a rooting interest in his self-styled avengers, even as (also right from the start) it’s clear that they are in way, way over their heads and sinking lower as the plot progresses.

Joe Leydon Film Critic In the interest of full disclosure, it should be stated at the outset that “My Country Heart,” a musical drama about a young couple competing against each other in a reality TV show, was co-written (with director Ate de Jong) by Steven Gaydos, a 30-year veteran of Variety. As he has indicated here and elsewhere, Gaydos is a man with an abiding passion for country and Americana music, which likely explains why, for all the offkey moments in this passably pleasant but utterly predictable indie, even some of the clichés resound with a faint but perceptible ring of truth.

Joe Leydon Film Critic Craig T. Nelson is an extremely fine and too often underappreciated actor, and it’s difficult not to be at least mildly impressed by his absolutely fearless lead performance in “Green and Gold.” In director Anders Lindwall’s ponderous and predictable drama, he plays Buck, a debt-ridden Wisconsin dairy farmer who’s way too proud and tradition-bound to change his ways, and ultimately so desperate that he literally agrees to bet the farm in order to save it.

Joe Leydon Film Critic It’s the sort of twist no screenwriter would dare invent: “Free Leonard Peltier,” a persuasively well-researched and often infuriating documentary about the American Indian Movement activist convicted nearly a half-century ago of killing two FBI agents, had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 27, 2025 — precisely one week after Joe Biden, as one of his very last official acts as U.S.

Joe Leydon Film Critic Imagine an acerbic love child miraculously spawned by Addison DeWitt of “All About Eve” and Waldo Lydecker of “Laura,” with John Simon serving as midwife, and you will be prepared for Jimmy Erskine, the viciously witty and mercilessly demanding title character played with utterly delicious flamboyance by Ian McKellen in “The Critic.” Directed by Anand Tucker (“Shopgirl”) and written by Patrick Marber (“Notes on a Scandal”), the film is a heady brew of period thriller, compelling melodrama and jet-black comedy, and the second most remarkable thing about it is how seamlessly these diverse elements gel. Even more remarkable, however, is McKellen’s multifaceted portrayal of the man aptly known as “The Monster,” both behind his back and to his face, in the film’s world of 1930s London theater.

Joe Leydon Film Critic Stories about survivors in a post-apocalyptic world continue to fascinate viewers in such streaming series as “Fallout” and “The Last of Us,” but “Homestead” likely marks the first time such a scenario has been used for a faith-based movie. And it definitely is the first time a theatrical film in that genre has been designed as the pilot for a TV series — a fact that, when it becomes clear in the movie’s final minutes, may strike many viewers as a bait-and-switch trick.

Joe Leydon Film Critic If it had been released just two years ago, “Bonhoeffer” might have come across as simply the latest in a long line of respectable but predictable period dramas about brave Germans who dared to stand up to the Nazi regime. Today, however, the movie feels more like an uncomfortably timely cautionary tale with unsettling echoes of current events.

Joe Leydon Film Critic In the tradition of “Death of a Salesman,” “The Assassination of Trotsky” and “Penn and Teller Get Killed,” “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” arrives with an on-the-nose title that serves as fair warning: Few surprises await you here. On the other hand, there’s never any doubt that things will work out OK for Donn Fender (Luke David Blumm), the 12-year-old protagonist.

Joe Leydon Film Critic After a lengthy and well-received run on the festival circuit, “Going Varsity in Mariachi” has arrived this week on Netflix, where it should find the wide mainstream audience it deserves. And “mainstream” really is the operative word here. Although it may sound in synopsis like a niche-audience attraction, this engaging and entertaining documentary about Texas high-schoolers playing for keeps in statewide mariachi band competitions has the right stuff to delight even viewers who normally wouldn’t know the difference between a grito and a guitarrón.

Joe Leydon Film Critic There is a great deal more hagiography than history in “Reagan,” a worshipful biopic of the 40th U.S. President that often plays like the cinematic equivalent of CliffsNotes, or one of those compact paperback biographies of notable figures that are designed to be consumed in an hour or less.

Joe Leydon Film Critic New Orleans natives may be slightly disappointed to find that a movie titled “Crescent City” — long a popular nickname for the storied Louisiana metropolis — actually is set in and around Little Rock, Ark. On the other hand, they might be happy to find that their hometown is not represented at all in this overplotted and instantly disposable drama, a bland gumbo of serial killer tropes, internal affairs investigation, Satanic sex addicts and buddy-cop shoot-’em-up stuff.

Joe Leydon Film Critic In the interest of full disclosure, it should be stated at the outset that “Heart Strings,” a musical drama about a young couple competing against each other in a reality TV show, was co-written (with director Ate de Jong) by Steven Gaydos, a 30-year veteran of Variety. As he has indicated here and elsewhere, Gaydos is a man with an abiding passion for country and Americana music, which likely explains why, for all the offkey moments in this passably pleasant but utterly predictable indie, even some of the clichés resound with a faint but perceptible ring of truth.

Joe Leydon Film Critic With “Kalki 2898 AD,” Telugu cinema filmmaker Nag Ashwin rifles through a century of sci-fi and fantasy extravaganzas to create a wildly uneven mashup of everything from Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” to Marvel Comics movies, underpinned by elements from the Hindu epic poem “Mahabharata.” It’s billed, perhaps optimistically, as the first chapter of the Kalki Cinematic Universe franchise — which makes it part of a larger trend, since it launches the same weekend that Kevin Costner’s Looks like Kevin Costner’s multi-film “Horizon” saga does in the U.S. International viewers unfamiliar with the specifics of the ancient Kurukshetra War between the Kauravas and the Pandavas — think Hatfields and McCoys, only with chariots and spears — may want to brush up on Indian mythology before approaching “Kalki 2898 AD,” if only to make some sense of repeated references to that clash.

Joe Leydon Film Critic If you’re going to set your movie somewhere in the intersection of two worlds fraught with danger — say, bull-riding competitions and hardcore crime — it’s always a good idea to cast actors who look and sound comfortable, and credible, in both places. There are quite a few things to admire in “Ride,” director Jake Allyn’s suspenseful drama about a rodeo family driven to extremes while trying to pay their young daughter’s medical bills.

Joe Leydon Film Critic Call “Sight” a stealth faith-based movie and you won’t be far off the mark. For the most part, it’s a respectful but unremarkable biopic about Dr.

Joe Leydon Film Critic The thin line between cheating death and chasing it appears to have been smudged, repeatedly, by maverick video journalist Margaret Moth, the subject of first-time filmmaker Lucy Lawless’ fascinating documentary “Never Look Away.” At least, that’s the impression we’re left with at the end of this compact yet complex portrait of a singularly and aggressively unconventional war correspondent who inspired equal measures of admiration and anxiety among her friends, colleagues and lovers throughout her 20 years of assignments in the world’s trouble spots — Baghdad, Sarajevo, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Zaire, you name it, she was there — for CNN. Something of an enigma even to those closest to her — “I never fully understood what was ticking inside of her” is a comment typical of responses by interviewees questioned by an off-camera Lawless — Moth was fond of proudly proclaiming, “I live life to the fullest.” But it was a life she repeatedly risked by going places, doing things and recording wartime horrors with such little regard for her own safety that a CNN teammate warned her: “There’s only so much Russian Roulette you can play.” It was also a life that she more or less reinvented herself to portray.

Joe Leydon Film Critic Winner of an audience award at the 2023 SXSW film fest, “The Long Game” is an utterly predictable yet thoroughly engaging period drama. Set in 1950s Texas, the film focuses on the true-life story of five Mexican-American youths who triumph against all odds while overcoming adversity, prejudice and periodic self-doubts in their pursuit of a Texas State High School Golf Championship trophy.