Joe Leydon

2 months ago | variety.com | Joe Leydon

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.

Mar 5, 2025 | variety.com | Joe Leydon

Not unlike an attentive bird who spots a smidgen of sustenance in a pile of cattle dung, director George Gallo and co-scripter Josh Postner’s new comedy retrieves a viable comic premise in the deservedly obscure and irredeemably wretched 1982 comedy “The Comeback Trail.” Unfortunately, their hugely enjoyable remake, in name only, was stuck in distribution limbo for the better part of five years, despite a stellar cast that includes Oscar winners Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones and Morgan...

Feb 28, 2025 | ca.news.yahoo.com | Joe Leydon

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.

Jan 31, 2025 | ca.news.yahoo.com | Joe Leydon

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.

Jan 28, 2025 | variety.com | Joe Leydon

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. president, issued a commutation of Peltier’s life sentences.