Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
‘Don’t mature, Ron Burgundy’ Could there be a more fearful venture for Anchorman devotees than believing lightning could strike twice? Before enduring the 119 minute sequel, I remembered to check the...
View ArticleI’m in Love with a Church Girl
‘I’m in Love with a Church Girl’ or Ja Rule, the Politics of Image Makeover, and Christian film. Unless you’ve been living under a rock or care little for the fate of popular mainstream rappers from...
View ArticleMitt – Greg Whiteley
As technology progresses political campaigns are increasingly filled with candid moments. Gaffes are known to hinder ambitious candidates (sometimes fatally) and forever haunt the victim. In Mitt...
View ArticleBastards
Claire Denis’ follow up to 2009′s White Material is a gritty film-noir about a Parisian sex ring entitled Bastards. The French title Les Saluds is certainly more poetic, but the film is anything but....
View ArticleThe Unknown Known – Errol Morris
The Unknown Known is a ‘Rumsfeld Rule’, meaning “there are things we think we know, but turns out we do not.” The flip side of the phrase reads “the absence of evidence does not mean the evidence of...
View ArticleGore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia is the “last word and testimony” of one of the last stalwart liberal writers of the 20th century. After the passing of Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut in 2007,...
View ArticleInterview with ‘Gore Vidal: United States of Amnesia’ director Nicholas Wrathall
Last week I had the opportunity to sit down with director Nicholas Wrathall to discuss his new documentary on Gore Vidal, The United States of Amensia. Our conversation covers many of the subjects...
View ArticleA Hard Day’s Night
London, 1964. Our feet tap and fingers snap to Eight Days a Week. We know all their hits on the radio and have seen them on the telly, but never like this: John, Paul, George, and Ringo – The Beatles –...
View ArticleDream Deceivers
The raving and remonstrating over subliminal messages in popular music is over. Sure, zealous listeners claim to hear voices of the Illuminati in contemporary hip-hop, but the hoopla is mostly a thing...
View ArticleCitizenfour
Citizenfour is the last and latest piece in filmmaker’s Laura Poitras ‘New American Century’ trilogy. The preceding films, My Country, My Country and The Oath, examined U.S. life and policy in the...
View ArticleAmor Cronico
Who is CuCu Diamantes? This is the question you’ll be asking during her film Amor Cronico. The film follows Cuban-American singer CuCu Diamantes who returns to her home country of Cuba for an...
View ArticleViva la libertà
Toni Servillo seemingly has the reputation of Italian cinema weighing on his shoulders. Most films coming out of the Peninsula and making it to international shores star, well, him. In fact, amongst...
View ArticleFoxcatcher
On the surface, Foxcatcher has the synopsis of a Wes Anderson movie: a socially awkward gazillionaire played by Steve Carrell employs Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo to wear vintage pastel unitards and...
View ArticleRosewater
In 2013, Daily Show host Jon Stewart took a three month hiatus to direct his first film. The resulting product is titled ‘Rosewater’ and is based on journalist Maziar Bahari’s memoir ‘Then They Came...
View ArticleIncomplete Control
Maya Deren is one of those unavoidable names in American experimental cinema. Her works At Land and Meshes of the Afternoon are displayed in film classrooms across the nation and even individuals...
View ArticleLaggies
How many times have we watched the ‘life journey’ relationship between the adolescent adult-male and mature boy-child play out on screen? Bruce Willis and Spencer Breslin in Disney’s The Kid comes to...
View ArticleMap to the Stars
‘Shock-jock’: someone who expresses opinions in a deliberately offensive or provocative way. These are my thoughts toward David Cronenberg. Love or hate him, the films of the veteran director are...
View ArticleIn the Company of Legends
It’s not every day that the people behind-the-camera get to share their stories. Usually fans interested in ‘the way things were’ during the glory days of Hollywood have to consult memoirs and...
View ArticleFull Moon in Paris
The defining auteur ability of Eric Rohmer is filling a simple tale with a semester’s worth of philosophy. Debates, pensive train rides, obsessions over Blaise Pascal. The director went so far as to...
View ArticleI Knew Her Well
It is not uncommon for even the biggest foreign films of the past to get lost in the shuffle. Nor for American films, either. The original cut of Orson Welles’ ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ has sadly...
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