Shorts are the incubators of filmmaking. It is by making short films that the filmmakers of the future learn their craft. Often in that learning process, a filmmaker will make something that is not just a learning exercise, but is a quality product. Each year a few of...
Animated films come in a variety of styles. That is certainly the case with the five films nominated in the Oscar category of Best Animated Short. Those films (along with some other animated films to fill out the program) are playing in select theaters to allow people...
?We live as we can, not as we want.? Aferim! is set in 1835 in the Balkans. It is a time in which the structures of society were clearly stratified. Everybody had their place?and nearly all groups looked down on other groups. For filmmaker Radu Jude, this is an...
Rectify is my new all-time favorite TV drama. You haven?t heard of it? That?s understandable; it is a Sundance TV original series. But the first two seasons (of three so far) are streaming on Netflix. A fourth and final season is in the works. Lest you think I shift...
?Not our fault?simply the way things work.? Perhaps your eyes glaze over when someone tries to explain the economics that lead to the housing bubble and Great Recession. It is indeed complicated, but The Big Short is an interesting way to try to understand it. It also...
?As long as you can still grab a breath, you fight. You breathe... keep breathing.? Alejandro G. I??rritu?s The Revenant fits all the qualifications of a big film: star-caliber acting from Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, and others; astounding cinematography in gorgeous...
We have come to expect mind games from Charlie Kaufman. Anomalisa certainly falls into that category, but not for the reasons of his other film. The situation he portrays is very much tied to reality. It is the way it is presented that messes with our minds....
?It doesn?t matter what I wear. It?s what I dream. They?re Lili?s dreams.? The Danish Girl opens in Copenhagen in 1926. Einar and Gerda Wegener (Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander) are artists who are very happily married. Einar is a successful landscape painter,...
Early in Trumbo, as Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) leads his daughter Niki on her horse, she asks him, ?Are you a Communist?? He replies, ?I am.? ?Is that against the law?? ?It is not.? Dalton Trumbo was one of the best known of the ?Hollywood Ten,? a group of writers...