Each week this column will highlight one winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, progressing chronologically until all winners have been discussed. There will be a brief discussion of the film itself followed by a mention of what we wish won from the nominees in the given year (though in many cases there were…
The first night, you hear him. The second night, you see him. The third night, he finds you. This is an apt description for both the film The Empty Man and its titular character. It has been on the road to cult film status for quite some time since its quiet release in October of…
This year has brought us a lot of unexpected and amazing films, but I don’t think Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is arriving with low expectations. As the final performance on film from Chadwick Boseman and a continuation of August Wilson adaptations following Fences, the latest Netflix original has been gathering buzz for quite some time.…
Imagine this scenario: a board room on a studio lot in sunny Burbank. It’s September 11th, 2001, and executives are watching the horrifying tragedy in New York City unfold on a television set that was wheeled in by an intern while another intern delivered everyone’s coffee orders. One executive at the end of the table…
Six years after he made his last film, Gone Girl, and transitioned to television, David Fincher is back with Mank, a film that almost everyone will also be watching on the small screen. Though I would normally stand by my thinking that every film is better in a cinema which has led me to see…
There is no greater titan in documentary filmmaking than the Bay State’s very own Frederick Wiseman. Born in Boston and raised across the river in Cambridge, Wiseman’s directorial career in film started with the infamous Titicut Follies (1967), a film banned in Massachusetts for decades because it highlighted the horrific treatment of psychiatric patients at…
Invoking the name Cronenberg is an immediate, unfailing method to conjure up mental images of grotesque body horror occurring at the intersection of sex, violence and technology. In this respect, Brandon Cronenberg was always going to find it difficult to escape the shade cast by his father’s long shadow. If Possessor is any indication, however,…
Fourteen years after his last appearance and Sacha Baron Cohen’s announcement that the character would be retired, Borat Sagdiyev, Kazakhstan’s most famous resident, has returned in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. We already knew from the first film that Borat couldn’t understand the meaning of the word “retired” so perhaps it should come as no shock that…
The 56th Chicago International Film Festival continues through this weekend, and there remains a treasure trove of high quality films from across the world to be watched. Here’s some of the darker highlights if you’re in the mood for something serious. Undine Christian Petzold has established himself as one of Germany’s most esteemed directors in…
Anyone who knows me well has likely accepted the fact that I hold no truck for the sentimental. Any kind of romanticised emotional mugging just rubs me up completely the wrong way, and a swell of strings in a film is usually accompanied by rising bile from the pit of my stomach. The way to…
Cinema Etc. 