Coverage from domestic and international film festival.
Reporting from the Denver Film Festival. It opens with sex: Explicit, hardcore sex in the bedroom. The woman before the camera is Emilia (Katia Pascariu), a teacher at a local private school. The man holding the camera is Eugene (Stefan … Continue reading BAD LUCK BANGING OR LOONY PORN
Reporting from the Denver Film Festival. With a nod to the writings of James Baldwin, Skinner Myers’ The Sleeping Negro consists of two conversations about race and revolution punctuated by a call to action and the dramatic rendering of theoretical decisions. In … Continue reading THE SLEEPING NEGRO
Reporting from the Denver Film Festival. At first blush, Paris, 13th District appears to be a collection of short stories. It starts with Camille (Makita Samba) meeting Émilie (Lucie Zhang). He is looking for a room to rent, and she is looking … Continue reading PARIS, 13TH DISTRICT (LES OLYMPIADES)
Reporting from the Denver Film Festival. When it comes to cinematic landscapes, few are as iconic—or at least as mined—as Monument Valley. Located in northern Arizona, home to the Navajo Nation, Monument Valley was placed in the geography of cinema … Continue reading THE TAKING
Reporting from the Denver Film Festival. Rysûke Hamaguchi’s cinematic adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story, “Drive My Car,” opens with another Murakami short story, also taken from the collections Men Without Women. The story is “Scheherazade,” about a social worker’s weekly … Continue reading DRIVE MY CAR (ドライブ・マイ・カー)
What does home mean to you? That’s the question Flee director Jonas Poher Rasmussen poses to Amin Nawabi, an Afghan refugee on the eve of marrying his boyfriend. Amin has a story from his past to tell. And until he does, there … Continue reading Escape the Virtual/Experience/The Virtual Escape: The 44th Denver Film Festival
Westermarkt 20 in Amsterdam is home to the Anne Frank House, the secret annex where the Frank and van Pels families hid from the Nazis for more than two years before being captured and sent to the camps. Today, Anne … Continue reading A World at Odds with Itself: Dispatches from the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival
The Koreans call it holojok—a portmanteau of holo (alone) and jok (together)—a growing phenomenon of young adults choosing to live alone in single-family homes. By some estimates, one-third of the total homes in Seoul are occupied by holojok. Aloners, the debut feature from writer/director Hong Seong-eun, … Continue reading Alone, Together: Dispatches from the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival
Reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival. There’s been a shooting at the school. Those might be the worst words a parent can hear. Words too many parents have heard in recent years. Amy Carr (Naomi Watts) hears them while … Continue reading LAKEWOOD
Michael J. Cinema 
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