Interview

By Matthew Sorrento. Of all the tales of cinematic greats meeting, it ranks as one of the best: in 1997, actor Doug Jones arrived to a night re-shoot of a film called Mimic to do creature effects. On the second day during lunch, the film’s director – the still little-known Guillermo […]

By Paul Risker. There are those films that offer a visceral experience – an explosion of sound, image and color. Then there are those that turn the lens of the camera into a window frame for us to gaze upon and experience other cultures. Nabil Ayouch’s Horses of God (2014) […]

By Matthew Sorrento. Beginning as a rather conventional documentary – at times so familiar we fear it will play like formulaic television – The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne soon finds a matter-of-fact style that nicely reflects its subject. A career jewelry thief, Doris Payne (born 1930) has used […]

By Gary M. Kramer. The Signal is a mind-bending (and genre-bending) film that lures its characters and its audience into a fantastic — as in strange and, perhaps, wonderful — world. Nick (Brenton Thwaites) is a partially paralyzed young man who is driving his girlfriend Haley (Olivia Cooke) across country […]

By Michael T. Toole. Surging from their success with the Oscar-nominated The Trouble with Water (2008) – a personal, harrowing look at a couple surviving the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina – filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin have moved on to equally compelling subject matter in Citizen Koch: Charles G. Koch, […]

By Gary M. Kramer. Like Julien (Laurent Lafitte), the younger computer instructor, who tells Caroline (Fanny Ardant) the older woman he is romantically involved with that he is a diversion, Bright Days Ahead, co-written and directed by Marion Vernoux is a diverting film. Caroline, a retired dentist, takes some classes […]

  By Paul Risker. We need to celebrate the documentary Salma (2013) as a story of survival. Imprisoned by her family, the famous Tamil poet and activist Salma was forced to marry and denied education. Told largely through the written word, the film depicts her use of poetry writing for […]

By Gary M. Kramer. The Bachelor Weekend is a genial Irish comedy about a groom named Fionnan (Hugh O’Conor), his best man Davin (Andrew Scott), and the quartet of other men taking to the great outdoors for a Stag party. The guests include Fionnan’s gay brother Kevin (Michael Legge) and […]

By Anna Weinstein. Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet has directed ten features and three documentaries in the past twenty-five years. Perhaps best known for her award-winning films My Life Without Me (2003) and The Secret Life of Words (2005) starring Sarah Polley, Coixet also directed Elegy (2008) with Ben Kingsley, Penélope […]

By Anna Weinstein. Oscar-winning Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier has directed fifteen films since 1991. Her film Brothers (2004) inspired the 2009 U.S. remake starring Natalie Portman, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Tobey Maguire, and her film After the Wedding (2006) was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Picture. Things We Lost […]