The date was March 16, 1990. The L.A. Raiders announced their return to Oakland. Janet Jackson won big at the fourth annual Soul Train Awards. Roseanne and America’s Funniest Home Videos were topping television ratings, and The Hunt for Red October and House Party were packing the multiplex. And that Friday, two competing motion pictures […]
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When you’re in this line of work, you’ll occasionally write a piece about how a film you’ve just seen connects to The Events of The Day, and sometimes it’s a bit of a stretch. And sometimes, the night before SXSW is cancelled because of the coronavirus, you go see a pre-festival screening of a movie […]
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“So open up the window and let me breathe.I said open up the window, shh-shh-shh-shh-shh, and let me breathe.I’m looking down to the street below, Lord, I cried for you,Ha ha, I cried, I cried for you, ha ha. Oh, Lord. The cool room Lord, is a fool’s room.The cool room Lord, is a fool’s […]
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“I know this seems bad,” Mo explains, as the police officer leads him out of his high school classroom. “But it’s not entirely my fault.” It’s important to set the proper tone, and establish the dominant themes, early on in your motion picture, and Jason Orley’s Big Time Adolescence certainly does that; in this introductory […]
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Exploitation movies are quick, dirty, gory fun. They’re also usually in questionable taste, which is part of their lowbrow entertainment value. You don’t watch VFW or Hobo with a Shotgun or even Brawl in Cell Block 99 for trenchant socio-political commentary. You watch these movies because nasty, well-executed action is thrilling to watch, and self-aware […]
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At once as intimate as a sigh and as urgent as a klaxon, Never Rarely Sometimes Always is an essential film about abortion that arrives at a critical time. But writer-director Eliza Hittman’s follow-up to her acclaimed 2017 film Beach Rats never feels like a polemic; instead, this frank drama is rooted in authenticity in […]
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The True/False documentary film festival is like Disneyland for non-fiction filmmaking. For one weekend every year, the small college town of Columbia, Missouri becomes a magical place where anything is possible. Renowned filmmakers rub elbows with college students, bartenders and farmers. High school science teachers break out their craziest outfits to help organize lines of […]
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In the era before streaming dominated both television and film, discussions would crop up about this or that TV actor making the leap to movies. Being a star on the small screen never guarantees the same kind of success on the big screen, as actors like David Caruso, the male half of Friends, and Shelley […]
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A Georgia good ol’ boy who takes a vow of silence until he achieves his dream of becoming the world’s greatest cockfighter. A blithe psychopath from California who moves to Miami and embarks on a new career as a fake policeman. A predatory used car salesman who suffers a spiritual crisis and decides the only […]
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With each new Pixar release, there’s a temptation to immediately see where it ranks. How does it stack up to The Incredibles’ sophistication and style? The Toy Story movies’ tender love for childhood and appreciation of growth? Inside Out’s ability to make you cry floods of heartfelt tears from its opening seconds? Onward probably fits […]
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Typically, the heroes of Westerns are rugged cowboys, bombastic outlaws, or noble sheriffs. They are men with a sneer on their lips and a gun on their hip. They are power fantasies that make the Wild West seem like a grand adventure, gladly glossing over the mundane menaces of living outside civil society. Like where […]
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The inmates who break out of Pretoria Central Prison are imprisoned for their political activities, but the context is mostly irrelevant to Francis Annan’s Escape From Pretoria, which is far more interested in generating suspense and painstakingly chronicling procedural details than in delivering a social message. Based on the memoir by South African anti-apartheid activist […]
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