Screen
Hardly dying
John McClane (Bruce Willis), the hyper-violent man perpetually wrong in place and time, has always been Rambo by way of “grumpy cat.” The only thing that makes Die Hard actually Die Hard is the surly sense of humor McClane spouts while committing copious homicides. ...
Magnifying injustice
A certain segment of the population has always believed Nixon’s War on Drugs to be a tragic waste of time, money and human life. A damning statistic, familiar to those with even a minor interest in the drug boondoggle, comes early in The House I Live In: “Since 1971...
The original crazy drummer
Rock stars don’t always have the prettiest personal lives. John Lennon (pre-Yoko) intimidated and threatened the women in his life. Sid Vicious may or may not have killed Nancy Spungen. Buddy Rich allegedly verbally abused every member of his band, making scores of...
Restless leg syndrome
Feel free to call director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film (and potentially last, if you believe his retirement threats) a wacky mallard because it is one odd duck. If a Hitchcock movie took a Dateline NBC segment behind the art house theater and got it pregnant, ...
BW BIFF Picks 2013: ‘Little World’
At the time Little World was being filmed, Barcelona native Albert Casals was a 20-yearold world traveler. But nothing about the way that Albert views the world or travels through it resembles what most of us think of or do as we go from place to place...
BIFF 2013: The man behind the Man in Black
In 2005, Jonathan Holiff was living in Los Angeles, working hard at his agency, The Hollywood-Madison Group. He hooked up celebrities with Fortune 500 companies for product endorsements; one of his biggest successes was getting Jessica Simpson together with Chicken ...
BW BIFF Picks 2013: ‘Seeking Asian Female’
Despite opening with interviews of white men looking for Asian women, Seeking Asian Female is about one white man, one Asian woman and one documentarian...
BW BIFF Picks 2013: ‘Trash Dance’
Texas choreographer Allison Orr does things the hard way. And as viewers of filmmaker Andrew Garrison’s Trash Dance will come to appreciate, the whole world is a better place because of her seeming lack of common sense...
Only kinda good, fellas
Nothing brings back memories of Sean Penn’s history as a serial domestic abuser like watching him revel in a man being drawn-and-quartered by automobiles. What a weird choice to take a cheesy, scene-chewing, 1940s mob-boss role at this point in his career. Cross-...
