“The Disaster Artist” is a missed opportunity. It takes the most bizarre, fascinating true story of cult cinema and reduces it down to an oddball, feel-good joke. There’s a story worth telling here, but it feels like director James Franco is giving us Cliff’s Notes of Cliff’s Notes. At its core, the film tells the […]
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“Justice League” is a milestone in American cinema: the flop with a $94 million opening weekend. That’s a lot of money for a flop to earn over a few days, but “Justice League” came with a high price tag ($300 million and change) and even higher expectations. It’s the DC Cinematic Universe’s answer to Disney’s
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The ninth annual Milwaukee Film Festival, which closed Oct. 12, hosted a record-breaking 84,000 attendees, 101 sold-out screenings, and nearly 200 filmmakers and guests participating in talkbacks. The conversation continues below, as Critic Speak contributor Eric Beltmann and The Cinemaphile blogger Shelly Sampon discuss why “The Blood Is at the Doorstep” deserved its Audience Award
Choosing “Faces Places” as the best movie in this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival might be a bit of a cheat. The latest work by Agnès Varda, a collaboration with the shades-wearing artist JR, wasn’t listed anywhere in the program book. No announcements were made. No tickets were sold. Nevertheless, a long queue formed Oct. 11
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Where should we pin the good citizenship ribbon? While some film festivals function as annual interlopers—destination events that cater to out-of-towners while largely excluding the locals—the nonprofit Milwaukee Film Festival has always been a provincial affair, inseparable from the city and its people. For nine years, MFF has invested in Milwaukee by celebrating its unique
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I suppose it’s easier to sell a throwback Western starring Peter Fonda than a nonfiction look at Baltimore’s rat infestation. No wonder, then, that the Milwaukee Film Festival, which opened Thursday, screened “The Ballad of Lefty Brown” last night inside the vast, majestic Oriental Theatre but will show “Rat Film” (pictured above) in an afternoon
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When the Milwaukee Film Festival named “The Blood is at the Doorstep” as this year’s Centerpiece Film, it was akin to drawing a line in the sand. Erik Ljung’s debut feature is a hot-button political documentary that asks audiences to feel empathy for victims negotiating the American justice system in the wake of a police
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“Baby Driver” is bubblegum crime, a pop-infused whirlwind of electric thrills and fizzy romance. It’s a heckuva lot of fun while it lasts, and more than a little catchy, but don’t expect to be moved by it.
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“It eliminates the middle men,” Academy Film Archive director Michael Pogorzelski said of the experience of watching a nitrate print before a sold-out crowd about to take in Powell and Pressburger’s towering “Black Narcissus” in the format at last weekend’s TCM Classic Film Festival. The idea being that an original nitrate print collapses the distance
As I struggle to find the words to begin this introduction to my coverage of the 2017 TCM Classic Film Festival—now in its eighth annual addition—I am, of course, reminded of the master of the introduction, Robert Osborne. It goes without saying that this year’s event will serve as a sort of public memorial to
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