AFI Fest this year screened 137 films (93 features, 44 shorts) representing 53 countries. The program included 14 official Best Foreign Language Film Oscar??submissions. I managed to make it to 18 films (17 features) during my time at the festival. My top films for the festival were (in the order I saw them): What Will…
Justice League is one of the most anticipated movies of the year, but not because you get a DC team-up film. The anticipation comes because most people were wondering, “Will they finally get these characters right?” That, of course, was the big question going in–so much so that Rotten Tomatoes delayed their Tomatometer for the…
Before each screening at the festival there is a short promo for AFI which is celebrating its 50th year. It features its three purposes: to preserve film?s history, to honor those who have achieved high levels of artistry, and to educate. The promo has three brief clips: Robert Altman talking about his vision (preserve), Sidney…
1971 was a year of turmoil in many places. But most of that seemed far away from a village in Switzerland. Life just goes on there. But there is to be an election about giving women the right to vote. (Of course, only the men will be voting on this issue.) In The Divine Order an unassuming housewife must take on a leadership role in the women?s suffrage movement in her locale.
If we’re really being honest, I’d admit that I’m going to watch a Denzel Washington film, no matter what it’s about. It’s already been proven with?Unstoppable?(I don’t watch films about trains),?Flight?(planes are worse than trains), and?Fences?(I’m just not into films where a play is translated onto the cinema screen). But in?Roman J. Israel, Esq.,?Washington burns…
One of my earliest cinematic memories is watching?The Miracle Worker?at school. In fact, we watched it for multiple years, to the disgust of my friends, while I found myself captivated by the determined insistence of Annie Sullivan to help Helen Keller learn to communicate. There was beauty there, back in the black and white narrative…
Taylor Sheridan (Sons of Anarchy, Veronica Mars)?has penned?Sicario?and?Hell or High Water, two films that have been received well critically. [For the record, I hated the former and loved the latter, but both are excellent stories.]?Wind River?is Sheridan’s script, as well as his second directorial stint, and the outcome is scintillating film. U.S. Fish and Wildlife…
Dickens?s A Christmas Carol is a well-loved story that has had various screen and stage versions and has become as much a part of Christmas as a cr?che. The Man Who Invented Christmas is the story behind the story. It is a combination of a look at Dickens, his creative process, and enough of the…
The First Calvary Division was ill-prepared for potential combat. It’s a recipe for potential disaster.
In Atomic Blonde, the story based on the graphic novel The Coldest City, Charlize Theron plays MI6’s Lorraine Broughton in a high stakes game of 1980s espionage. Interrogated by two senior officers (John Goodman and Toby Jones), Broughton tells her story retrospectively, as she navigated Berlin and a desperate search for a dangerous list of…
