“Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.” — Alan Jay Lerner While the presidency of John F. Kennedy is known for its strong leadership in civil rights and in furthering the cause of peace, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, the elegant, graceful widow…
I suppose the title, “The Christmas Pageant That Almost Never Was” would have worked, but Believe is fine. After all, it’s the holiday season, so we’re entitled to a little suspension of (dis)belief, as the newest faith-heavy film from writer/director Billy Dickson in his major debut, conveys. Drawing allusions to Frank Capra’s 1946 classic, “It’s…
Well, that was upsetting. The new documentary, Blood on the Mountain, about the coal industry’s insidious and nefarious relationship with the people and land of West Virginia, is an investigation into the corporate and political cover-up of a history steeped in exploitation and suffering. It’s also an indictment of the communities willing to trade that…
To Leonard Cohen, Eliezer who went just before the big wave rose. A bulldozer wanders the streets, threatening buildings in ruins through a little Polish village that little knows about its decay. It circulates through the narrow streets silently, streets that remain unwitting to its presence. A mobile bridge appears, a ferry. A lone passenger…
Part family drama, part mystery, part slapstick comedy, and part mad-scientist movie, Men & Chicken is one of the most bizarre and original films I’ve seen. Writer and director Anders Thomas Jensen combines all those elements like a mad-scientist himself, conjuring up an absurd story full of grotesque characters, and translates it on-screen in an…
Writer-director Barry Jenkins (“Medicine for Melancholy”) delves into a power-driven coming-of-age drama detailing the tremendous angst-ridden existence of an impoverished Miami-based gay black youth struggling with self-identity and self-worth in the unflinching and revealing drama Moonlight. Convincingly raw and roughly poignant, Moonlight pushes some psychologically and emotionally charged buttons in a gritty and unforgettable narrative…
Xavier Dolan opens It’s Only the End of the World with the caption: “Somewhere a while ago, already.” The comma is extremely important, as it plays with the past tense of a while ago and the present tense of the already, almost as a physical presence, already there. It was a while ago since I…
