THE ROOM NEXT DOOR
A woman is dying and asks her friend for a favor. “What is it?” the friend asks. “I’m going to kill myself,” the woman says. “And I want you to be in the room next door when I do.” That … Continue reading THE ROOM NEXT DOOR
Tag: John Turturro
GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO
The story of Pinocchio, first penned in 1883 by Italian writer Carlo Collodi, has long been a favorite of storytellers: A lonely man fashions a boy out of wood; the wooden boy becomes sentient; a cricket teaches the wooden child … Continue reading GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO
HIGH NOON ON THE WATERFRONT
October marks the 75th anniversary of Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo’s refusal to answer the House on Un-American Activities Committee’s question: “Have … Continue reading HIGH NOON ON THE WATERFRONT
THE BATMAN
Gotham City looks broken. The streets are littered with trash, the buildings tagged with graffiti. Crime is rampant, and what used to be temporary tent cities now look like established shantytowns. Drugs are ubiquitous—Drops, which are enjoyed by the very … Continue reading THE BATMAN
LANDLINE
Watch enough movies and trends start to develop. One of the major ones: Love is hard; fidelity is harder. And as time wears on, it becomes even harder. At least for Tom (John Turturro), a middle-aged father of two daughters … Continue reading LANDLINE
MIA MADRE
Reflecting on his life and work in 1975, critic and filmmaker François Truffaut wrote: “Today, I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between; … Continue reading MIA MADRE
HANDS OF STONE
When it comes to sports on film, none transfer to a composed and contained visual medium quite like boxing. Two men, and in some cases women, square off in a confined arena below the spotlights of showtime. The action is … Continue reading HANDS OF STONE
RIO, I LOVE YOU
What makes up a city? The people? The locale? The flavor of the food, the smell of the streets, the sounds of the crowd? When author Reyner Banham concluded his exhaustive study of the city of Los Angeles in The Architecture … Continue reading RIO, I LOVE YOU
DO THE RIGHT THING
On Nov. 15, the Starz Denver Film Festival will screen a 35mm revival of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, a movie that is as relevant today as when it debuted in 1989. This past summer’s headlines out of Ferguson, Missouri, and … Continue reading DO THE RIGHT THING
Michael J. Cinema 
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