Painted between 1348 and 1350, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains is one of the few surviving works from painter Huang Gongwang and considered by many to be one of China’s finest works. It’s a painting of rivers and mountains, and the movie … Continue reading DWELLING IN THE FUCHUN MOUNTAINS (CHUN JIANG SHUI NUAN)
Truth is a slippery thing. So are lies. There are bald-faced lies, little white lies, and evasions. But there are also constructs; stories and parables that aren’t necessarily true but point to an underlying and undeniable truth. Where the lies … Continue reading THE TRUTH (LA VÉRITÉ)
There are a great number of personal movies playing at this year’s Denver Film Festival, but Honey Boy is the rare intersection between personal memoir and commercial enterprise. One that ought to break out of the festival circuit and into mainstream theaters. … Continue reading HONEY BOY
Released in 1989, New York Stories is an omnibus film, three shorts stitched together by a city. And though two of the directors’ oeuvres are inseparable from the city streets, tenements, and high rises that dot the New York skyline, it is … Continue reading Blu Tuesday: NEW YORK STORIES
Buster Keaton was destined for the silver screen before moving pictures were even born. As the story goes, an 18-month-old (or was that six-month-old?) Keaton took a tumble down a flight of stairs and didn’t make a sound. “That’s some … Continue reading Blu Tuesday: OUR HOSPITALITY
“I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.” —Notes From the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky Who makes the monster, and where do they come from? We’ve been asking those questions for far too long … Continue reading JOKER
Life at the bottom isn’t easy. Near the bottom ain’t any easier, and that’s where Kasie (Tiffany Chu) resides. Her mother left when she was a child, her father (James Kang) is a bed-ridden invalid in his final days, and … Continue reading MS. PURPLE
Mexico City, the mid-1980s: Carlos is 17, sexually curious, slightly confused about what to do with his life, and lacking ambition. His friend takes him to a nightclub, a gay nightclub, and he sees his friend’s older sister, Rita performing … Continue reading THIS IS NOT BERLIN
Fairy tales aren’t ways to avoid the horrors of the world; fairy tales are ways to provide a buffer from the horrors of the world. Sometimes those buffers are thicker than others. In the case of Tigers Are Not Afraid, that … Continue reading TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID
The allure of a portrait is the suggestion of the secret. Just look at the one of Lisa del Giocondo. We know when she was born, June 15, 1479, and we know Leonardo da Vinci painted her sometime in the … Continue reading PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE
