How screwed up is America? In Annie Silverstein’s “Bull,” when young Kris (Amber Havard) gets arrested for breaking and entering and she’s offered a deal, she replies, “can’t you just send me to juvie?” The level of resignation that Kris, or other people like her in real life, must feel, is both baffling and dismaying. In Trump’s America, people like her who go through difficulties just shrug it off, hope for the best and

Marie Adler’s story about an intruder raping her in the middle of the night seemed incredible. So impossible, in fact, that she later retracted her story, earning her the enmity of police, her friends and the entire community.

The thing was, Marie wasn’t lying. The teen had, in fact, been violated in her own home by a man who bound her and took photos of her body amidst hours

Whether you like Bruce Springsteen or not, I dare any viewer of this movie not to be completely swept away by the pure joy of the infectious “Blinded by the Light.”

Inspired by Sarfraz Manzoor’s 2007 memoir “Greetings from Bury Park,” the film “is inspired by the words and music of Bruce Springsteen.”

Set in 1987 Luton (a working-class town in southeast England)

In the eighties and nineties independent film was in its heyday. Many great “human” comedies came out of this era. Before giant Hollywood romcoms, little films filled with relationship-related comedy were plentiful, with many of them being highly entertaining.

Writer/director Joshua Land’s new Maryland-set film “I Like Me” (co-written by Abby Sussman) has a mid-nineties

I think cinema, I love cinema, I see a great number of films during the year and always have. If asked to list great director names, I would reply, Fellini, Bergman, Fassbinder, Kurosawa and Kubrick. Though a hundred names would barely begin to cover it. But… and oh, yes, Tarentino. Despite not much enjoying his movies—too much violence, albeit often humorous, rivers of blood, and a permanent agitation—I believe I’ve seen all his films since “Reservoir Dogs.”

San Francisco’s Castro District is known for its historical importance in the LGBTQ community, most famously for the election of Harvey Milk as the first openly gay elected official in California’s history. The Castro is used quite differently in the new independent comedy “Bathrooms Stalls & Parking Lots.”

Coming from Brazil, Leo (the film’s writer/director Thales Correa) arrives in San Francisco’s

Filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar have watched as the industrial Midwest has cratered around them. High-paying factory jobs once stretched from western Pennsylvania to Michigan, providing a comfortable working-class living enabling workers to buy a home, two cars and send their children off to college.

All of that changed as plants closed and jobs outsourced