Who knew Bud Selig likes fabulist movies spoken in Farsi? There he was, sitting directly behind me during a 2010 Milwaukee Film Festival screening of Shirin Neshat’s “Women Without Men,” a work of magic realism about four Tehran women. I’ve often had the good fortune of bumping into public figures at festivals—Harold Ramis, Susan Sarandon […]
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Topping my Netflix queue today are “The Forbidden Room,” an absurdist ode to early cinema from Canada, and “Winter Sleep,” a prizewinning drama from Turkey. If we scroll past the blockbusters, the relentless, rotating inventories of streaming services remind us that unique movies are always being made all over the world—and that filmgoers seldom have
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In the years since George Romero singlehandedly created the zombie genre with 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead,” he befriended and partnered with horror fiction magnate Stephen King for 1982’s “Creepshow,” a delightfully cheesy and colorful chiller anthology. And though King has gone on to write and even direct more movies, he never tried his hand
In his compulsively readable new book “Movie Freak: My Life Watching Movies,” film critic Owen Gleiberman recommends limiting one’s intake at film festivals to three movies per day. Four movies or more, Gleiberman contends, is just too many, and keeping one’s slate to three “guarantees you won’t fail to respond to the nuances in that
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While I cannot recommend the new comedy “Meet the Blacks” on artistic grounds, as it almost completely falls flat in the humor department, a part of me hopes that it does well at the box office. Why? Because if the film makes any commercial waves, it will more likely than not initiate an important discussion
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The end credits of “God’s Not Dead 2,” similar to those of its smash-hit predecessor, begin with a detailed text scroll of court cases, both federal and local, that supposedly informed its legal-themed narrative about a high school teacher on trial for invoking Jesus in the classroom. Blink and you’ll miss them, as they fly
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After exploding onto the international film scene with the virtuosic 2005 debut “Tsotsi,” made in his native South Africa, director Gavin Hood gave the term “sophomore slump” new meaning by ignoring filmmaking elementals in favor of blatant Bush-bashing in his 2007 crossover picture “Rendition.” Now, after big-budget forays into the fantasy realms of Marvel Comics
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At what point does an auteur’s “signature style” cross over into becoming a game of directorial Mad Libs? That’s the question I wrestled with for most of Terrence Malick’s “Knight of Cups,” a typically gorgeous effort from the reclusive filmmaker that nonetheless employs his trademarks—shots following characters from behind and hushed voiceover the most recognizable
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What is “10 Cloverfield Lane”? A helluva marketing gimmick, first and foremost, and a movie second. Produced and announced with impressive stealthiness, it arrives on the back of a brilliant advertising campaign that tantalizingly teases a frightening sci-fi mystery. Or is it a hostage thriller? And what’s the connection to the 2008 found-footage hit “Cloverfield”?
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To be declared a “daring” film in the year of Gaspar Noé’s 3-D ejaculation and Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Planet Hoth-inspired horse carcass sleeping bag is a difficult feat. By these standards, Ciro Guerra’s “Embrace of the Serpent” is not particularly flashy: its most shocking moment involves a temporary switch out of black-and-white. Even Dorothy would
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