It’s only a matter of minutes before a loaded gun is produced. Not unusual considering Ash is Purest White revolves around two gangsters, but this is mid-’90s China and unregister firearms are illegal and come with a heavy penalty. Just showing someone … Continue reading DFF Review — ASH IS PUREST WHITE (江湖儿女)
The 41st Denver Film Festival brings together more than 300 shorts and feature films from Oct. 31–Nov. 11. Sure, there are bound to be some duds in there, but 2018 is a veritable cinematic bumper crop, particularly when you look … Continue reading The World Comes to DFF: Dispatches From the 41st Denver Film Festival
What about the ROUS?Rodents of unusual size? I don’t think they exist. —Princess Buttercup and Westley in The Princess Bride Bad news Westley, they do exist. Growing up to 20 pounds and 24 inches long, with a tail that tacks on … Continue reading RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE
Any filmmaker’s visit to CU-Boulder’s International Film Series is cause for celebration, but when the filmmaker in question is writer, director, actor, occasional stuntman, cinema scholar, and genial raconteur Brian Trenchard-Smith, attendance is requisite. Born with celluloid coursing through his … Continue reading Laughs & Gasps: The Cinema of Brian Trenchard-Smith
As the Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock said, “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” And who does the cutting? Editors. Sifting through hours upon hours of footage, editors construct coherency from a multitude of takes and shape … Continue reading Nick Houy on MID90S
General Lorens Löwenhielm (Jarl Kulle), a middle-aged man with a lifetime of missed opportunities behind him, has come to dinner. Seated next to his aunt, and two chairs away from an old flame, the general is surrounded by nine others, … Continue reading BABETTE’S FEAST (BABETTES GÆSTEBUD)
July 12, 1917, Bisbee, Arizona: Cochise County Sheriff Harry Wheeler and a deputized posse nearly 2,000 people strong rounded up 1,300 striking miners—many of them immigrants—and sympathetic residents, loaded them into cattle cars at gunpoint and shipped them 200 miles … Continue reading BISBEE ’17
We’re the Sisters Brothers, and we’re good at what we do,” proclaims Charlie Sisters with a toothy grin. What’s he good at? Killing people and claiming bounties. Charlie is played by Joaquin Phoenix, an actor who is successfully following in … Continue reading THE SISTERS BROTHERS
There seems to be an endless fascination with the famed Saturday Night Live. While the merits of the weekly television show are continually debated online and during office lunch breaks, documentaries about the show’s glory years continue to pop up … Continue reading LOVE, GILDA
Michael J. Cinema 
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