She doesn’t ride into town; she walks, dragging her baggage along with her. She has a name she’ll change and a past she can’t. So opens Maggie Greenwald’s The Ballad of Little Jo, a 1993 western that feels less like a … Continue reading THE BALLAD OF LITTLE JO
Of all the film fests hit hard these past four years, none took it on the chin quite like the Sundance Film Festival. First, there was the planned switch from in-person to virtual in 2021. Then, an eleventh-hour scuttle yielded … Continue reading Room for Improvement: Dispatch from the 2024 Sundance Film Festival
A skull has turned up in the desert along the Texas-Mexico border, and near it lies a sheriff’s badge. So opens John Sayles’ 1996 Lone Star—newly restored and available on home video from The Criterion Collection—a magnificently constructed story combining history, … Continue reading LONE STAR
If we could see a hundred years into the future, what would we think of the choices we make today? Decisions made in the moment always seem like the best possible solution at the time, but with the benefit of … Continue reading THE ZONE OF INTEREST
It’s not about race; it’s about caste—the system of injustice and subjugation that persists, generation from generation, resistant to the individuals who work to defy and shatter it. So it is in Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 nonfiction study, Caste: The Origins … Continue reading ORIGIN
It opens with a murder, then a denial, finally a confession. Wealthy theater producer Montferrand (Jean-Christophe Bouvet) forced himself on Madeline (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), who shot him with his own revolver. All she did was go looking for a job, and he tried … Continue reading THE CRIME IS MINE (MON CRIME)
It’s a question of behavior. Are we born decent and then choose to behave indecently? Or is it the other way around? What shapes a person: nature or nurture? The 2004 teen-comedy Mean Girls—with a script by Tina Fey based on … Continue reading MEAN GIRLS
If you’re an independent filmmaker, getting into the Sundance Film Festival is high on your wishlist. “It’s such a big festival, and it’s such an industry festival,” Kelly Sears says. “I’m ecstatic that my little, scrappy film is invited to … Continue reading Kelly Sears on THE LOST SEASON
Some people bite the hand that feeds them. American Fiction’s Thelonious “Monk” Ellison wants to chew it whole and spit it back out. Before we get there, first this: American Fiction is funny. It’s easily among the funniest movies I … Continue reading AMERICAN FICTION
Michael J. Cinema 
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