Why am I alive?” she asks.“I have no idea,” he replies with a kind smile. Those are the final words of Toy Story 4, Disney/Pixar’s latest, and reportedly last, addition to the beloved franchise that launched the computer-generated animation empire back … Continue reading TOY STORY 4
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. —Bob Dylan Rolling Thunder Revue is Scorsese’s second documentary about the singer/songwriter from Duluth, Minnesota. His first, No Direction Home from 2005, covered Dylan’s early years up to his motorcycle … Continue reading ROLLING THUNDER REVUE: A BOB DYLAN STORY BY MARTIN SCORSESE
Who was Roy Halston Frowick? He was the man who stuck a pillbox hat on Jackie Kennedy’s head before her husband’s inauguration in 1961. He was the gay kid from Des Moines, Iowa, who brought New York fashion to both … Continue reading HALSTON
The Last Black Man in San Francisco’s Jimmie Fails and Montgomery Allen are Estragon and Vladimir. Only they’re not waiting for Godot; they’re waiting for the bus. Neither comes. Unlike Samuel Beckett’s two heroes, Fails and Allen get up and … Continue reading THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO
The John DeLorean story has it all: Cars, cocaine, supermodels, countries at war, political scuffles on both sides of the Atlantic, an FBI sting of ridiculous proportions, secret off-shore bank accounts, deception, avarice, opulence, and ego. It could be a … Continue reading FRAMING JOHN DELOREAN
Humanity has reached a dead-end, and it’s fracking that did it. In real life, maybe, but in writer/director Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, definitely. Fracking the polar ice caps—which doesn’t sound that far-fetched—has thrown the Earth off its axis and … Continue reading THE DEAD DON’T DIE
Stories have trained us to expect life to progress in a linear fashion: Setup, complication, and resolution—preferably in that order and ideally with some connective tissue. In reality, it’s a little more circuitous. The connections are there, but some distance … Continue reading AMERICAN WOMAN
How Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States of America has been the topic du jour ever since November 6, 2016, and the discussion won’t be going away anytime soon. Currently, the narrative is occupied by investigations … Continue reading LATE NIGHT
The Japanese New Wave (1956–1976) doesn’t get near the love the French New Wave does in cinephile circles, but that doesn’t make the work any less significant. A key entry, Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara no Sōretsu) from 1969, was … Continue reading FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES
Michael J. Cinema 
You must be logged in to post a comment.