Screen
Revelations kill the suspense
A horror movie that works cuts through analysis, shrugs off opinions and snobbery, and eschews complexity — either in technique or in budget. You know it works when the hairs on the back of your neck rise. You know it works when others in the audience — as if moved ...
‘To die with something to live for’
On Sept. 1, 2013, Hayao Miyazaki, the imaginative creator of My Neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso, Spirited Away and The Wind Rises, announced his retirement....
Look what the cat dragged in
There never has been, and there never will be, a movie like Roar. Even the tagline is one in a million, “No animals were harmed in the making of this film. Seventy cast and crew members were.” If that doesn’t pique your interest, then you ought to have your pulse ...
Streaming cat blues: Week two
Apocalypse Later: Harold Camping vs. The End of the WorldAs 2010 drew to a close, TV preacher and Biblical mathematician, Harold Camping, predicted the...
Slipping Mickey
Gather ‘round kids and hear a story from the days of yore, a time when artists drew cartoons with their actual human hands and not every children’s movie had covert sex jokes for ma and pa to chuckle at. It was a time before everything was glossy and smooth, before ...
Home viewing: Pride streams
It was President Bill Clinton who first declared June “Gay & Lesbian Pride Month.” That was in 2000. In 2009, President Barack Obama opened...
‘Ong Bak 2’: Thai fighters
Bruce Lee is dead, Jackie Chan and Jet Li are slowing down, but the world of martial arts never sleeps. Keeping everyone awake these days is Tony Jaa, Thailand’s biggest action hero, who returns to inflict more damage in Ong Bak 2: The Beginning...
No bull! Shh…
A silent film reimagining Snow White shot in black and white and set in Spain, in which the heroine is a bullfighter, is not an easy sell. Who knows what lengths writer/director Pablo Berger had to go through to secure financing for this gothic reworking of a famous ...
Mutant fight club
Those who only know comic books through their (somehow) still-increasingly popular cinematic adaptations don’t know the dirty secret about the source material: Most story...
Looking to illuminate: The DocuWest Film Festival
Documentary film festivals can be a hard sell. You don’t get the star power that goes with fictional films, the impossibly dramatic moments, or the singularly well-crafted denouement that wraps the whole thing up into one resonant piece. The documentary is all about ...


















