With his documentary "The Act of Killing," Joshua Oppenheimer has reset the bar for tragi-comedy. As in, don’t even bother trying, Hollywood. Ever again. In fact, why don’t we just dispense with next year’s Oscar race right now and give both the best documentary and the best feature award to this ...
Read More »The carefully-orchestrated release of Alfred Hitchcock's nine surviving silent films, freshly restored by the British Film Institute National Archive, is burnishing his already polished reputation. Cinephiles around the world are gathering to watch the movies, made between 1925 and 1929, in venues f...
Read More »It’s been over a decade since twin brothers Alex and Andrew Smith’s film “The Slaughter Rule,” starring Ryan Gosling, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002, and their follow up film, “Winter in the Blood” returns them to their home state of Montana, this time focusing on a young and troubled...
Read More »When Disney/Pixar’s “Monsters Inc” was released way back in the fall of 2001, it was easily the studio’s warmest and endearingly heart-tugging feature. But “Monsters Inc,” in its vision of a monstrous universe that derives its power from children’s screams, was also the studio’s most self-contained ...
Read More »While Sheffield Doc/Fest is known for its MeetMarket and great European (especially British) and American industry presence, the festival has also developed an exciting digital media program (which has made its way into the festival's tagline) and a capable main slate of films. Five films, four of ...
Read More »Here's a look at some of the other BAMcinemaFest titles that may not have generated as much attention as others, but still deserve singling out.
Read More »If you like Matthew Rhys as the Americanized KGB agent in FX's terrific 80's spy series The Americans, and think he might be even more dashing with his natural-born British accent, then Netflix is streaming a film for you. In The Scapegoat, set in 1952 and based on a Daphne du Maurier stor...
Read More »American cinema seems preoccupied with the emptiness of excess, at least in the first half of 2013. Baz Luhrmann luxuriates in the meaningless wealth of "The Great Gatsby," while Harmony Korine put his own twisted spin on the dark soul of the American dream in "Spring Breakers." And now comes Sofia ...
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“More than ninety percent of directing a picture is the right casting,” says Martin Scorsese at the outset of Tom Donahue’s engrossing documentary “Casting By.” And he’s not alone in his feelings -- Woody Allen, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood and a legion of others put in face time in the film to tr...
Read More »Adventure Time is one of those properties that taps right into what its audience is looking for at just the right time. Though there is undoubtedly an adult crossover – and certainly a college student following – Adventure Time nails what I would surmise is its target: children and adolescents.
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