Right before I started watching the new indie release, International Falls, I had noted to myself that I wanted to watch a documentary called Misery Loves Comedy. I don’t know much about that documentary, which features interviews with dozens of comics, but it appears to speak to the connection between comedy and depression. What director Amber McGinnis and screenwriter …
There’s something perverse in seeing great actors doing great work in a film that has an extremely problematic script and plot. In the new release The Burnt Orange Heresy, directed by Giuseppe Capotondi and written by Scott B. Smith from the Charles Willeford novel, a collection of endlessly enigmatic actors that includes Claes Bang, Elizabeth Debicki, …
There are not enough Tom and Jerry cartoons in existence to compensate for the level of hopelessness represented in the Russian film Beanpole, which won its director/co-writer Kantemir Balagov the Un Certain Regard Best Director Prize at Cannes in 2019. Two women are at the center of a story that takes place in the last days …
For decades after the war, Marthe Huffnung Cohn, the subject of Nicola Alice Hens’s documentary Chichinette: The Accidental Spy, didn’t talk about her experience as a Holocaust survivor and Nazi fighter during World War II. “People want to talk about the future, not the past”, says the 90-something diminutive powerhouse of energy. It was only recently …
Have you heard of Anne Innis Dagg? The answer is probably not, and people around the world should know her. Writer/director Alison Reid’s The Woman Who Loves Giraffes shines a spotlight on Dagg, a Canadian who traveled to Africa alone in the 50s to do some of the first studying ever of animals in their own habitat. …
Writer/director Rob Garver’s documentary What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael is a fascinating look at a woman who carved out a life as a writer in an industry that has been famously unforgiving for opinions offered by female voices. Kael built a career as a movie critic in a very important time in cinema, right …
The more distance I get from seeing Bombshell, the more mad the movie makes me. The film, which soft-tackles the story in which former CEO of Fox News Roger Ailes finds his downfall through sexual harassment claims from the most prominent female (oft-seen) on-air personalities at the studio, is certainly a decidedly good news/bad news affair. …
Have you heard about Thor: Ragnarok and What We Do in the Shadows director Taika Waititi’s latest film? Maybe you’ve seen a trailer for a film that takes place in WW2, featuring a boy in a Nazi Youth uniform getting advice from an absurd-looking Hitler and thought, “Hell, no. That’s inappropriate!” If I told you …
Showing the universal power of Springsteen’s poetry How much could an aspiring Pakistani-Brit writer from Luton and a musician from New Jersey have in common? Prolific and beloved writer/director/producer Gurinder Chadha’s new film Blinded By the Light suggests quite a lot. It stands in the belief that people searching for truth, no matter where they …
When assigned to review Geek and You Shall Find, I thought what I usually think in such circumstances, the circumstances under which my experience as an art gallery owner that specializes in film art, including superhero, Disney, and, just generally what would be termed “geek art”, is meant to come to bear. In the 20+ years …
