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Movie Times | Movie Reviews | Theater Reviews

'The Greatest Showman': For Ladies, Gentlemen & Parentally Guided Children of All Ages

By Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires film critic
04:08PM / Thursday, January 04, 2018

Watching Michael Gracey's "The Greatest Showman," about the life and times of circus visionary P.T. Barnum, it occurred to me that the Trump debacle wasn't just about old white men afraid of losing their foothold. And it also wasn't just about white supremacists afraid of multiculturalism, or about trying to preserve dodo bird industries that would have no future place in our health, wealth and commonweal if we were to progress as a nation. Nope, I fear it has to do with our basest instincts: a curiosity and approach-avoidance appetite for the macabre. It is our national car accident, turned upside down on the side of the road, unheard screaming

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'The Shape of Water': No Ordinary Fish Tale

By Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires film critic
01:41PM / Thursday, December 28, 2017

If you think the book was closed long ago on fairy tales, that they've all been written and read, and that the genre is further rendered obsolete by the brutal, anti-intellectual sentiment now rearing its ugly head in America, then you need to see "The Shape of Water." Director Guillermo del Toro's beautifully conceived, written and acted fantasy, at once cynical, imaginative and wistfully altruistic, enchantingly draws us into its dissection of our existence, telling its classical good vs. evil tale with a reverence for the truth we humans require in order to flourish. Del Toro touts the inherent worth and sanctity of the individual in the unlikely

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E-Book Review: 'Symphonies & Scorpions' by Gerald Elias

By Stephen Dankner, Special to iBerkshires
02:24PM / Wednesday, December 27, 2017

Musician/author Gerald Elias is widely known by Berkshires classical music aficionados for living a double artistic life as a violinist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, performing at the BSO's Tanglewood Music Festival each summer, and also being the gifted author of six classical music-themed mystery "whodunits": "Devil’s Trill," "Danse Macabre," "Playing With Fire," "Death and the Maiden," "Death and Transfiguration" and "Spring Break."

Now, Elias has just released his first downloadable e-book, "Symphonies & Scorpions." A memoir, he has subtitled it "Ramblings of a Wand'ring

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'Wonder Wheel': Round and Round It Goes

By Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires film critic
12:17PM / Friday, December 22, 2017

Woody Allen flummoxes us. I think it was Henry Miller who asked to be judged by his literary work and not his personal life. "Fat chance" said some; "OK" said others; and "Who's Henry Miller?" was doubtlessly the response by most. While Allen makes no such plea, aloud or tacitly, the arrival of each new movie from this film genius is always a sticky wicket. We are put at odds by alleged misbehavior, objectionable proclivities and charges of sexual harassment never quite resolved in the cauldron of public opinion. Thus, with the opening of "Wonder Wheel," sometimes dramatically brilliant, cleverly derivative in its homage to a gaggle

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'The Disaster Artist': No Soap, Radio

By Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires film critic
04:25PM / Friday, December 15, 2017

Director James Franco's "The Disaster Artist" reminded me of a non-joke that popularly circulated when I was a kid. It goes like this: Two elephants are in a bathtub and, when one says to the other, "Pass the soap," the other elephant informs, "No soap, radio." You tell it and then you laugh, intentionally flummoxing your little friend who, afraid he'll look stupid if he doesn't laugh, chortles despite wondering why it's funny. Several decades since, I question, just a little, if the joke was actually on the jester ... that somewhere there was humor in the put-on. Such, more or less, is the territory into which "The Disaster

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Children's Musical Set For Dec. 2-3 in Williamstown

11:47AM / Friday, December 01, 2017

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Community Bible Church will present its annual children’s Christmas musical at 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 2 and 3.

This year’s production is titled “Angels Aware” and tells the story of what came before the night Christ was born - way before. Gabriel calls a meeting to announce God's plan to send his son to Earth. The angels are shocked to learn that Jesus will be sent to Earth as a baby.

“Angels Aware” features two dozen local children ranging in age from 4 to 14 singing, dancing and acting in a Broadway-style musical. It is directed by Connie Sheehy, with musical direction by Trish Clairmont and costumes by

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'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri': Signs of the Times

By Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires film critic
03:12PM / Thursday, November 30, 2017

Director Martin McDonagh's compelling "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" features, among other things, misogyny, police brutality, racism, rape, child molestation, white supremacy, unrestricted gun possession, and anti-gay sentiments. But no, it's not about Roy Moore's quest to represent Alabama in the U.S. Senate. Rather, equally provocative and similarly chilling, the superbly acted film details a mother's rage over her daughter's unsolved murder to the backdrop of a small town rendered dysfunctional by the above-listed disgraces. Frances McDormand, playing Mildred Hayes, the infuriated mom, is the beleaguered face of survival in

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'Justice League': Oh Superman, Where Art Thou?

By Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires film critic
04:59PM / Thursday, November 23, 2017

Prior to becoming one special effects-crammed battle scene after the next, director Zack Snyder's "Justice League" spends an inordinate amount of time detailing the difficulties of putting together the folks necessary to saving the world. Mind you, I'm not talking about the 20 or 30 influential U.S. senators and congresspeople it would take to flip their brethren in the noble pursuit of preserving America's currently endangered democracy, though that'd be a real good idea. Only the autocrats have fun in an autocracy. But no, this is just about superheroes. All the same, this movie rendition about that gang of DC Comics crusaders who attempt to solve their

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'Murder on the Orient Express': Has You Humming the Scenery

By Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires film critic
03:38PM / Saturday, November 18, 2017

The beautiful romanticization of an era that in truth was only elegant for the well-to-do makes director Kenneth Branagh's version of Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express" a veritable feast for the eyes and imagination if not for the movie house detective in you. Oh, there are wonderfully opulent appurtenances aboard the luxury train where famed Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot plies his craft with genius, whimsy and a gallantry too often eclipsed by humankind's less noble instincts. Starring an all-star cast to match the assemblage of beautiful people in Sidney Lumet's 1974 adaptation of Christie's 1935 mystery, this group is also

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'LBJ': Offers Hope From the Past

By Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires film critic
06:41PM / Thursday, November 09, 2017

Viewers uninterested in politics and American history probably won't enjoy the insight and philosophical ruminations ventured by director Rob Reiner in his savvy biopic, "LBJ." Detailing the momentous ebb and flow of the times just before and after the ascension of Lyndon Baines Johnson to the presidency of the United States in 1963, Reiner, working from a script by Joey Hartstone, studiously puts forth a thesis worthy of an honorary master's degree. If it had new information about the man behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I'd of considered a Ph.D. Now, I won't attempt to pull away those who would much prefer the couch, the football game, a

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