Screen
The filmmaker too tough to die
Few filmmakers are as devoted to cinema as Alex Cox. Since his debut in 1984, Cox has made movies for the studios, for BBC’s...
Lean, mean empathy machine
Smarter, better people than me have written about Moonlight, writer/director Barry Jenkins’ megaton bomb of artistic triumph. Honestly, I almost didn’t write this at...
reel to reel | Week of Jan. 19, 2012
16 Love Sixteen-year-old Ally “Smash” Mash lives between the carefully painted white lines of Junior Tennis. Unbeaten and about to go pro, she has no time for lazy newcomer Farrell Gambles. But when fate and a twisted ankle intervene, she teaches Farrell what it ...
Free Japan!
Movies are a reflection of culture. Be it comedy, survival or everyday angst, Americans find touchstones among the moving pictures we see. Yet looking beyond our own theaters can provide a glimpse of what is special to cultures on other parts of our planet...
Owned by none, loved by all
Cats have been woefully maligned by cinema. Sometimes they are villains — like the conniving Si and Am from Lady and the Tramp —...
A solid but soulless adaptation
Sleek and, until a stupidly violent climax, very entertaining, Unknown is the opposite of Memento. It’s about a man who knows who he is but everybody around him has forgotten, or thinks he’s delusional, or lying...
One last toast to the wunderkind
Let us raise our cups. Standing as some of us do on opposite ends of the river, and drink together. ... To the movies....
The gospel according to woman
There is an old saying that you should never meet your heroes, they may disappoint you. The new Belgian comedy from writer/director Jaco Van...
In this life or the next
Filmmaking is an act of optimism. Setting ideas to paper, convincing others to come and join the party, devoting time, money, blood, sweat and tears to capture those images on celluloid, believing those images can carry meaning throughout the world and, hopefully, ...
The last masterpiece
On April 23, 1917, Buster Keaton made his theatrical debut in Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s The Butcher Boy. Three years later, Keaton would strike out...
