The 1920’s were the culmination of the greatest wave of immigration in American history in which more than 25 million people arrived, mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe, to escape the aftermath of the Great War and its resulting poverty and oppression, or simply to embrace the promise of the “American Dream.” Many of these…
Now this is something interesting from Fox Searchlight. It’s Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance) and it tells the tale of a has-been actor desperate for a comeback. From the trailer, it’s clear he hasn’t taken his fall from the spotlight very well, battling with his own internal demons as well as co-stars (and…
Jorge Dorado knows a thing or two about memory and time. The Spanish director worked with the legendary Pedro Almodóvar on such films as “Talk To Her” in 2002 and “Bad Education” in 2004, and now on his own addresses the power of the mind in his feature debut with the sensual thriller Anna. The…
The disturbing case of the West Memphis Three has been covered extensively in Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s “Paradise Lost” trilogy, along with Amy Berg’s 2012 documentary “West of Memphis.” So what additional information can be brought to the table with the 114 minutes of Devil’s Knot? Answer: Not much. Director Atom Egoyan’s foray into…
At the onset of Martin Weisz’s Los Angeles-based Squatters, two raggedy drifters awake on the beach under a lifeguard station. Dirty clothes. Matted hair. The sun slowly rises and two of the most glammed out drifters of cinema are revealed. The beauty of the girl is made abundantly clear through her cherry red lips while…
Legendary French director Jean-Pierre Melville famously uttered “become immortal and then die” in Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic “Breathless” (À bout de souffle), and these words are echoed by the lead character in Redlands. “Ultimately, I want to push beyond reality and become immortal through art.” Lurking somewhere between the innocence of young Hollywood…
Riccardo Paoletti is no stranger to the magic of Fellini. Once upon a time in 2006, the director presented a story of black and white, “Dailies” (In coda ai titoli), about crewmembers who worked at the legendary Cinecittà in the sixties. Paoletti’s latest project, Neverlake, captures a touch of Fellini’s magical realism and blends it…
