Screen
To see a man about a demon
Offering moderately scary Roman Catholic “gotchas!” to a global film audience of all creeds, The Rite comes from director Mikael Hafstrom, whose previous film was the stylish supernatural thriller 1408...
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...
Soulless cinema
To Disney, from the desk of Mufasa: “Remember who you are.”
The Lion King, Disney’s latest computer-generated remake, isn’t like the rest. Yes, the story...
Just an old-fashioned love song
"Your wife’s got that gorgeous glow that comes with your first marriage,” a party guest quips to the oblivious husband. Yes, his face says...
Scorsese comes up short with ‘Shutter Island’
Dennis Lehane's character-packed but gimmicky novel "Shutter Island" earns a slightly less gimmicky film from Martin Scorsese, who makes this 1950s period piece his tribute to the psychological thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock...
Powerful pandemic picture
One of the most powerful — and frightening — film themes is global pandemics. Diseases already seem to spread without us fully understanding or being able to control them, and rapidly evolve to become resistant to our defenses. It's not much of a leap to see a very ...
K for Kane
For many, it’s the greatest of all time. But when it was released 80 years ago, Citizen Kane was a death sentence. The movie’s director and...
Beyond notorious
RBG, the latest documentary from Julie Cohen and Betsy West, opens with images of Washington D.C. accompanied by sound bites from conservative talk radio...
‘Cinema was a comfort’
“Movies aren’t just making history; they’re making our history,” filmmaker Mark Cousins muses in his latest documentary, The Story of Film: A New Generation. “They’re...
