Screen
Those wonderful people out there in the dark
Open Secret — a nearly forgotten and difficult-to-find B-programmer from 1948 — ought to be seen by everybody. In it, newlyweds John Ireland and...
A history of violence
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion ... I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do...
The problem with pulling your punches
When Wonder Woman sailed into theaters this summer, coolly breaking superhero box office record after box office record, it was no surprise that curious...
Mental illness explored
Something really bad is coming, an impending apocalypse, and only Curtis (Michael Shannon) can see it. His mom was institutionalized with paranoid schizophrenia when he was 10, however, so are his dreams prophetic or is he starting to lose it? This is the plot of ...
The Disney ouroboros
It all started in Kansas City with a young dreamer named Walt Disney. Alice’s Wonderland wasn’t his first creation, but it was significant. The...
‘Amelia’ plays it safe
"No borders, just horizons," enthuses aviator Amelia Earhart in the new biopic Amelia. "Who wants a life imprisoned in safety...
Winter camp
Your tolerance for writer/ director Gregg Araki’s White Bird in a Blizzard hinges on your appreciation (or lack thereof ) for campy content. If you were weaned on John Waters, you’ll gobble up every cheese-tastic second, from a horny housewife lusting towards her ...
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 ...
Fantastic furry fun in ‘Mr. Fox’
In a world of children’s films increasingly characterized by technological accomplishment and sophisticated rendering in lieu of good old-fashioned storytelling, it was a breath of fresh air to enjoy the stop-motion Fantastic Mr. Fox...
