Jonathan Paley, Ballplayer: Pelotero
Although its population is just 2% the size of the US’, the tiny, impoverished Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic accounts for a fifth of all the young men who go on to become Major League...
View ArticleBenoit Jacquot, Farewell, My Queen
The court intrigue that animates Benoit Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen – set during the final days of Marie Antoinette’s reign – could be the stuff of so many costume dramas. To his great credit,...
View ArticleMikkel Norgaard, Klown
Long considered one of the funniest shows in Scandinavia, the television series Klown features Danish comedians Casper Christensen and Frank Hvam playing Curb Your Enthusiasm-style variations on...
View ArticleRichard Trank, It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl
Studiously researched, It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodore Herzl reveals the life that informed Austro-Hungarian journalist-playwright Theodor Herzl’s creation of the Zionist Movement, which...
View ArticleKleber Mendonca Filho, Neighboring Sounds
One of the year’s most startling debuts, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds is a queasily effective portrait of a society undergoing dynamic change. Unfolding over the course of a few weeks in...
View ArticleSophia Takal, Green
In Sophia Takal’s Green, a couple of young, New York sophisticates travel upstate in order to research a book on sustainable farming, but when a working-class local woman becomes the object of their...
View ArticleSteve James, Head Games
In my early teens, I played football at Moeller High School. Like most of the children who sought to play for the school that had for decades fielded one of the country’s preeminent high school...
View ArticleAndrea Arnold, Wuthering Heights
Occasionally a period piece comes along that feels neither like the gauzy, ignorantly rendered, idealized versions of the past churned out by the Hollywood of yesteryear nor like the product of our...
View ArticleTroubled Assets
With the 2008 post-crash Presidential election as ironic backdrop, Andrew Dominik’s violent crime, Killing Them Softly, bitterly regards our crumbling American dream. Brandon Harris interviews the...
View ArticleSusan Youssef, Habibi
Nearly 10 years in the making, Habibi is the semi-autobiographical first feature from 2010 “25 New Face” Susan Youssef, a tale of forbidden love between two Palestinian students who find it impossible...
View ArticleDavid Lynch’s Lithographs at Plus Camerimage
David Lynch is a very popular director the world over, but perhaps no place more than Poland. His work is greeted with the same fanfare as the latest disposable, multiplex-bound spectacle in this...
View ArticleJay Bulger, Beware of Mr. Baker
An often shocking documentary on Ginger Baker, the wildest of wild rock & roll drummers of the 60s and 70s, Jay Bulger’s profoundly entertaining yarn Beware of Mr. Baker follows the original...
View ArticleWar Witch Wins Top Prize at 20th Plus Camerimage
Concluding its latest edition on yet another rainy late fall afternoon in Bydgoszcz, Plus Camerimage awarded its top prize, the Golden Frog, to War Witch, the celebrated story of a sub-Saharan female...
View ArticleThe Neverending Story of Self-Distributing The Upsetter
Indefatigable in their desire to find larger and larger audiences for their film, Adam Bhala Lough (Bomb the System, Weapons) and and his co-director Ethan Higbee have been self-distributing The...
View ArticleMichael Connors, Allegiance
An intelligently written and genuinely felt Iraq War drama, Allegiance is perhaps the first film about the way the conflict shaped the lives of those who prepare to go to battle that has been written,...
View ArticleMy Year in Film: A Memoir of Sorts
It was 2012 and there was an election on and it was getting hotter everyday and I didn’t know how much time we had left and it was the end of film (if not the end of cinema) and I knew not what to do,...
View ArticleTom O’Brien, Fairhaven
Three thirtysomething buddies reunite for a funeral in a sleepy Massachusetts fishing hamlet in Tom O’Brien’s finely tuned Fairhaven. They beat about the shores of this southeastern Massachusetts town...
View ArticleCritic’s Notebook: Slamdance 2013, Part One
It’s a tough thing, being a Slamdancer. One participant in this year’s 19th edition, an actor who headlines one of the dramatic competition entries, described it as the “little brother” festival, and...
View ArticleDaniel Schechter, Supporting Characters
A genuine meditation on male friendship, the absurdities of indie moviedom and many different kinds of loyalty, Daniel Schechter’s Supporting Characters, a surprise hit at last year’s Tribeca Film...
View ArticleCritic’s Notebook: Slamdance 2013, Part Two
The Dirties may very well be some kind of terribly depressing cautionary tale or it may just be that the joke is on us, but this debut film from Matt Johnson, who also stars and co-wrote, couldn’t be...
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