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
For his first five films, writer/director James Gray set his stories in New York City. Makes sense, considering Gray is a born and raised New Yorker, but with his two most recent films, Gray looks far beyond the Burroughs. Releasing … Continue reading THE LOST CITY OF Z
For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts. —George Eliot, Middlemarch On Jan. 31, 2003, Katherine Gun’s life changed. Gun, a translator, working for the British intelligence agency Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ), received an email from … Continue reading OFFICIAL SECRETS
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
Bobby (James Le Gros) is stuck. Despite a journey that starts in Italy and ends in Hawaii, Bobby is stationary, passive, and numb. He’s working at a low-end Italian eatery that charges high-end prices. He’s divorced and living in a … Continue reading PHOENIX, OREGON
You don’t have to know a thing about soccer, or even care much for it, to enjoy Diego Maradona, Asif Kapadia’s documentary about the legendary Argentina player. Constructed from over 500 hours of archival footage, and bolstered by audio interviews with … Continue reading DIEGO MARADONA
It’s been 20 years since novelist Jonathan Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn — the story of Lionel Essrog, a low-level gumshoe with Tourette’s — and actor Edward Norton has been trying to bring it to the screen every since. Oh, to know the … Continue reading MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN
Michael J. Cinema 
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