Cinema Siren

The early cynicism about capitalism and subsequent happy surprise that greeted  2014’s The LEGO Movie is gone. How can a sequel even begin to crack success of the first one? Enter The LEGO movie 2: The Second Part, blasting its hyper-colorized retina-burning images to the grateful masses. We are now in need of two hours …

New indie release To Dust is equally strange, darkly funny, and insightful about the all-too-often mind-altering and devastating effects of grief. Filtered through a fable of sorts, it questions both the logistics of death and the inability to accept its reality and meaning by those left behind. Director and co-writer Shawn Snyder, raised a reform …

A curious art house film has infiltrated the specialty box office directed, written and edited by Romanian filmmaker Pintilie called Touch Me Not. It’s a fascinating if uneven movie about people venturing into a research project to get beyond their own fears and issues around intimacy. The personalities and experiences of the actors involved have …

Capernaum is one of the five films nominated for a foreign film Oscar this year, and has the distinction of having won the Jury Prize at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. This heartbreaking film is challenging viewing. Director and co-writer Nadine Labaki hired non-actors who had lives very close to those represented in the story, …

Director Jen McGowan’s Rust Creek, released in January both in theaters and on demand, is a compelling, exciting, and surprisingly unusual thriller.  Female moviegoers have had to learn to accept that they aren’t going to be represented three-dimensionally in a large percentage of films released. This is particularly true in thrillers, which are often made …