Burt and Harold have been accused of murder. Not in the legal sense, mind you, with arrests and affidavits, attorneys and judges, but in the old-fashioned way of finger-pointing and yelling louder than everyone else. You see, Burt Berendsen (Christian … Continue reading AMSTERDAM
Zombieland has a lot of fun with its premise. Our hero and narrator is not a rugged and resourceful alpha male, but the scrawny and timid Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), a character who might seem more at home in a Woody Allen … Continue reading ZOMBIELAND
Set inside the notorious Najayo prison of San Cristobal, Dominican Republic—a place where the prisoners outnumber the guards roughly 266 to 1 and the right bribe can get you just about anything—Woodpeckers (Carpinteros) intimately follows Julián (Jean Jean), a petty criminal … Continue reading WOODPECKERS (CARPINTEROS)
Don Humberto (José Luis Gómez) has turned 80. He’s the head of a pharmaceutical company that has made him filthy rich. Still, he gets no respect. He knows this because he knows how others see him: obscenely wealthy with no … Continue reading OFFICIAL COMPETITION
Filmmaker John Sayles has been living on the fringes of independent cinema since his 1979 debut, Return of the Secaucus Seven, and even if he has lost a few steps over the decades, he regained his footing with 2013’s Go For Sisters, a “ripped … Continue reading GO FOR SISTERS
A jitterbug contest. Hot rods drag race on a mountain road. A violent car crash. A woman wanders the Hollywood Hills with a head injury. A man recounts a dream of meeting a monster living behind a diner dumpster. A film … Continue reading MULHOLLAND DRIVE
I have been here before,But when or how I cannot tell:I know the grass beyond the door,The sweet keen smell,The sighing sound, the lights around the shore. Those are the first lines of “Sudden Light,” a poem by Rossetti—a favorite … Continue reading HOPE GAP
There’s a secret at the heart of Don’t Worry Darling, and that’s half the problem. You can glean that from watching the trailer, and even if you’ve skipped it, you pick up on it within the first five minutes of the … Continue reading DON’T WORRY DARLING
It opens like any other western: Sepia soaked still photographs of settlers in wagons traversing a wild frontier while title cards credit the actors, the filmmakers, and the dedication. Then the pictures begin to move. In the background, a lone rider … Continue reading BUCK AND THE PREACHER
Michael J. Cinema 
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