Stanley Nelson didn’t leave for college without taking his father’s copy of Miles Davis’ game-changing 1959 album, Kind of Blue, along with him. The three-time Emmy-winning documentarian and cinematic chronicler of the...
Julius Onah’s “Luce” focuses on a teenager (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) at an uppity Northern Virginia high school whose trillion-dollar Barack-Obama-smile provides the sugarcoating ornamenting his stellar grades and numerous athletic...
In its 15th year, Fantastic Fest celebrated with a slate full of wild films, studded with strange spectacle and surprises. At the Alamo Drafthouse, throngs of cinephiles flocked daily not only to see the titles that have been tearing it up at Cannes...
Robert De Niro excels at playing closed-off, unreachable characters—hard men who might seem a bit dull if you met them for the first time, but have inner lives that they rarely let anyone see, and are mysteries to themselves. De...
VICTORY GARDENS THEATER, the wonderful performance venue located in the historic space once known as the Biograph Theater—where famed gangster John Dillinger met his immortal end—will be introducing Stacy Janiak and me as debuting...
A political satire in the biting spirit of “Wag the Dog” and “In the Loop”—though not nearly as sharp as either—Christopher Morris’ “The Day Shall Come” claims with a title card that it’s...
"Wanna get weird?" These three little words launch the cascading comedy of errors "The Death of Dick Long." Three friends, Zeke (Michael Abbott Jr.), Earl (Andre Hyland) and Dick (director Daniel Scheinert) finish up their band practice (or: "band"...
Fatih Akin’s controversial “The Golden Glove” is a bleak, depressing attempt to remove all glorification or justification from the serial killer subgenre. There are a few fleeting references to its protagonist’s family, but...
“Seven” meets “The Terminator” in one of the weirdest genre mash-ups you’ll see all year, Netflix's “In the Shadow of the Moon.” If that pitch sounds odd to you, it really only scratches the surface of a...
Takashi Miike is the black, beating heart of world cinema. The man whose presence on festival circuits instills equal parts fear and wonder, the man you have to beware or watch. Miike’s rakish presence is perhaps best summed up by the title of...