Screen
Mommy issues
A mother is on trial for murdering her child. We know how, but not why. Nor does the mother. She does not deny the...
Between the notes
Jessica first heard the bang in the early morning hours. It’s an unearthly sound, a loud thump she describes as a big concrete ball...
Just whose America is this?
July 12, 1917, Bisbee, Arizona: Cochise County Sheriff Harry Wheeler and a deputized posse nearly 2,000 people strong rounded up 1,300 striking miners —...
The cinematic sampler
As far as cinema is concerned, 2021 opened not with a bang but with cautious optimism. For starters, moviegoing has returned with AMC, Cinemark...
Wadiya do that for?
Although it turned many a talentless friend into an amateur impressionist, Sacha Baron Cohen’s performance as Borat was inarguably hilarious. The improvised, horribly racist, legitimately brilliant film that put Cohen on the map was a straight-up phenomenon and a ...
Who needs a swan song?
Golden Era Hollywood screenwriter Frank S. Nugent once described story as a disturbance of the status quo: “Something happens to upset it; the disturbance...
That’s a wrap
The 45th Denver Film Festival concludes this weekend with a full slate of features and shorts, documentaries and narratives, and even a party or...
Twentieth-century mogul
For 50 years, Scott Eyman’s been collecting string. The author of over a dozen books on Hollywood history has a deep collection of research...
Lost in a sea of memory
Few films can announce themselves as succinctly with an opening image as Frantz does. In the foreground: green leaves and pink flowers waving in...
Just as I remember
This is not based on a true story; this is a true story.” So proclaims the title cards that open American Animals — a...
Direct action
As the human toll of global climate change comes into clearer view, attempts to find political or market solutions frustrate many environmentalists who call...
BIFF: I Am Divine
The filmmaker John Waters and his muse, the larger-than-life drag queen Divine, are responsible for some of the most bizarre and shocking films of the ’70s. Divine’s turns in Waters’ movies propelled her into a star of the era’s mostly underground gay subculture, ...
