Michael Shannon doesn’t really look like Elvis Presley. For one thing, his face is shaped all wrong, his cheeks are too long and deeply creased. If it weren’t for the crazy haircut, the suits, and the sunglasses one would never think that Shannon was supposed to be The King. But then, neither does Kevin Spacey look like Present Richard Nixon. And yet through the sheer strength of their ... more >
ARCHIVES
“Elvis and Nixon,” TRIBECA FESTIVAL
One of the best films this year
Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey
Directed by Liza Johnson
Tribeca Festival, a sense for nostalgia and curiosity in “Obit”
On the sausage-making art of writing an obit
[Documentary]
Directed by Vanessa Gould
It’s always the films about death which end up being the most life-affirming, isn’t it? Vanessa Gould’s "Obit" follows a group of unsung reporters who work the obituary column at The New York Times. Frequently given only a couple hours' notice before their columns must go to press, these men and women race against the clock to capture the entirety of human lives within the span of a few hundred ... more >
TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL, “Bugs”
Crunch
Directed by Andreas Johnsen
It would have been so easy for Andreas Johnsen to make his new documentary “Bugs” a harmless, twee film about two Westerners traveling the world searching for edible insects. The set-up seems ripped straight from the Travel Channel or the Food Network: chef Ben Reade and researcher John Evans scour the globe sampling as many of the 1,900 species of consumable insects as possible. In Kenya we watch ... more >
MAGNUS, chess player
From child to chess genius
[Documentary]
TRIBECA FESTIVAL, New York - In all seventy-six minutes of Benjamin Ree’s new documentary “Magnus” I’m not sure if I can remember ever seeing Magnus Carlsen, the world’s highest ranked chess player, ever smiling during a game. He smiles plenty when he wins, but that’s not the same. During the games his eyes scrunch up and his face tightens into a mask of marbled concentration. The happiest we ever ... more >
“A kind of murder”
A Christine Vachon / Ted Hope production
Patrick Wilson, Jessica Biel and Eddie Marsan
Directed by Andy Goddard
TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL - For a man who takes great pride in being a writer of crime fiction, architect Walter Stackhouse (Patrick Wilson) sure acts like a blithering idiot when he get embroiled in an actual murder investigation. It’s quite astonishing, really; he doesn’t do one thing right. When his mentally unbalanced and suicidal wife winds up dead beneath a rural overpass—the same overpass where ... more >
“The Human thing,” Tribeca Film Festival
Film was shown in VIEWPOINTS program
Héctor Medina, Enrique Molina and Carlos Enrique Almirante
Directed by Gerardo Chijona
Director Gerardo Chijona liberally name-drops a plethora of Hollywood films in “The Human Thing”: “3:10 to Yuma” (1957), “The Godfather Part 2” (1974), “Terminator 2” (1991), and even 'The Sopranos.' One would expect that with such a macho pedigree of visceral violence “The Human Thing” would be some kind of high-octane thriller or cinematic homage. But it’s neither. The film is one of words and ... more >
Tribeca Film Festival | “Do not resist”
The favorite so far at this year's Tribeca Fest
[DOC: 70 mins]
Directed by Craig Atkinson
I remember those nights of iodine streetlights and black-suited riot police after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August of 2014. If a singular event can be pointed to as the catalyst for the new Civil Rights Movement, it would be those weeks of civil unrest that turned our national conversation towards police brutality and institutionalized racism, shattering once and ... more >