White Lie opens with protagonist Katie Arneson (Kacey Rohl, “Red Riding Hood”) shaving her head. Combined with the title, this opening scene may well prompt the viewer to form an initial interpretation. While this first impression may be proved right, the film subsequently goes in several unexpected directions, probing deep and prompting unexpected reactions. Katie…
On June 6, 1982, exactly 38 years after D-Day, roughly 60,000 Israeli troops and more than 800 tanks, heavily supported by aircraft, attack helicopters, artillery, and missile boats invaded Southern Lebanon, a country already involved in a decades-long civil war. Israel’s publicly-stated objective was to push PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) forces back 40 kilometers (25…
The second of his 12 plays dramatizing the Black experience in America during the twentieth century, August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a haunting and powerful experience that focuses on Gertrude “Ma Rainey” (Viola Davis, “Widows”), known as “The Mother of the Blues,” one of the first popular Black blues singers to gain acceptance…
The ghost story is common in the cinematic output of many countries. From the Mexican “The Devil’s Backbone” to the Spanish “The Orphanage” to the Japanese “Dark Water” and the British/Iranian “Under The Shadow,” as well as the renowned classics “The Haunting” and “The Innocents,” the ghost story has proven itself versatile and adaptable to…
“Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange” — William Shakespeare, “The Tempest” Film critic Roger Ebert once said, “All good art is about something deeper than it admits.” On the surface, Sofia Coppola’s (“The Beguiled”) On the Rocks is a light comedy about a…
A film about two teenage girls navigating the streets of New York by themselves with little money or a place to stay is normally the breeding ground for melodrama. In the hands of director Eliza Hittman (“Beach Rats”) and remarkably natural performances by first time actors, Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder, however, the film Never…
When looking at Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler’s Radium Girls, it’s easy to be stuck at a cinematic fork in the road. The film features a cast of delightful up and comers (including Joey King of “The Act”) and is inspired by a true story filled with relevant energy. Yet when examining the final…
