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Mickey Mercier
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Feb 22, 2024 4:45 pm
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Mickey Mercier photos
Raeden Greer (left), director of The Hill We Climb, and Lara Hill, director of HowDo I Tell You This.
El Dorado Film Festival South Arkansas Arts Center El Dorado, Arkansas Feb. 8 – 11, 2024
Independent filmmakers converged on the El Dorado Film Festival in Arkansas to show their work and collaborate on future projects. Doc Martens boots were de rigueur, and a New Haven producer’s movie won honorable mention.
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Jamil Ragland
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Feb 14, 2024 5:16 pm
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Casablanca Cinestudio Hartford Through Feb. 15, 2024
I’d heard about Casablanca so many times. I’ve seen all the references and parodies, but never the movie itself. When I saw that Cinestudio at Trinity College was showing it for a special three-day Valentine’s Day engagement, I figured this would be one of the few opportunities I’d have to see it on the big screen finally. But I thought to myself, “Why are they playing a World War II epic for Valentine’s Day?”
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Robin Lapid
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Feb 12, 2024 4:19 pm
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Maggie Cheung stars in Wong Kar Wai's "In the Mood for Love" at 7th West's "Cozy Cinema" night.
Cozy Cinema: Movie Night 7th West Oakland Feb. 8, 2024
A movie night in Oakland with films by auteurs inspired by filmmakers I love — Godard, Varda, Ozu, Tarkovsky—and Filipino snacks? That’s my idea of heaven.
A bar and restaurant known for hosting all manner of parties, karaoke nights, and raucous community events might not seem like the ideal venue for a quiet movie night. But that was the kind of homey vibe that Kevin Pelgone, a co-owner of 7th West bar and the curator of its “Cozy Cinema” series, wanted to capture. And the bill this past Thursday night — ”In the Mood for Love” by Wong Kar-Wai, followed by “Moonlight” by Barry Jenkins — seemed tailor-made for movie nerds like me. The fact that the space also serves Filipino snack foods like lumpia, along with calamansi-flavored beer, cemented my decision to venture into West Oakland to check it out, if only to meet the genius who thought of pairing some of my favorite things together.
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Karen Ponzio
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Feb 5, 2024 10:10 am
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Scene from "Queen of Katwe."
How does a young girl from Uganda go from beginning chess player to champion? Disney’s Queen of Katwedocuments the journey from one to the other as well as the struggles and triumphs in between. The 2016 film was the first entry in this month’s“Free Film Fridays: From Stage to Screen: Celebrating Black Yale School of Drama Alumni” at the Ives branch of the New Haven Free Public Library.
A welcoming sight: the (often political) marquee at Grand Lake Theater.
“They Made Me A Fugitive” and “Aimless Bullet” Noir City 21 Grand Lake Theater Oakland Jan. 23, 2024
Who knew watching films was exhausting?
If you’ve ever been to a double feature, perhaps you already knew. I had not, and did not. Thrillingly witty dialogue, drool-worthy costuming, and high-suspense scenes of anguish and threats of violence kept me and many others emotionally engaged, and in my case, left me physically drained.
Such was the scene at Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater Tuesday night for the screenings of They Made Me A Fugitive and Aimless Bullet as part of the 21st Annual Noir City film festival. The former is a 1947 British classic by director [Alberto] Cavalcanti (he is billed with just his last name in the credits), originally of Brazil and a part of the 1920s Parisian avant-garde film craze before settling in the UK to produce classic noir films. This one, as organizers and hosts Eddie Muller and Imogen Smith said before the films began, is an example of both the art and the people of the era.
As the program stated, “darkness has no borders,” and Muller encouraged us to “dig the darkness” of these selections, the second of which was “probably the bleakest we’ve ever screened.”
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Jamil Ragland
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Jan 24, 2024 1:45 pm
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Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious "Monk" Ellison.
American Fiction (2023) Cinemark Buckland Hills 18 XD and IMAX Manchester, Conn. Jan. 23, 2024
Warning: This review contains spoilers.
As soon as I saw the trailer for American Fiction, I knew I had to see it. Partially because I’m a frustrated fiction writer myself. Partially because I’ve often lamented the kinds of stories that Black people are allowed to tell. Partially because it’s a Black movie and they need my money. I mostly wanted to see it because I wanted to see how the movie dealt with its central conflict: Does “urban” literature perpetuate stereotypes? Are we as Black writers always performing for White people either way?
I’m ensconced on a couch with a bowl of popcorn and a soda in a movie theater, hiding out from the chilly afternoon sun in Oakland. This doesn’t feel like an impersonal, chain-movie theater experience. It’s more the kind preferred by many film nerds like myself: a rep house screening in a local theater that’s made to feel like home.
Which is fitting, since I’ve come to celebrate someone’s birthday.
It’s the eve of David Bowie’s birthday, in fact. He would have turned 77 on Jan. 8 this year. (He passed away from liver cancer in 2016.) And for the second year in a row, the New Parkway Theater is showing a Bowie film to celebrate as part of its “Queer Classics” series — Bowie’s feature film debut, Nicholas Roeg’s trippy 1976 cult classic, The Man Who Fell to Earth.
In director Peter Bogdanovich’s shocking 1968 debut Targets, old Hollywood collides with the new at a drive-in movie theater. Boris Karloff plays a version of himself in this film: the aging, disillusioned movie star Byron Orlok, who, after receiving encouragement from an appreciative young director played by Bogdanovich, agrees to appear at a nearby drive-in to promote his latest film, a creature feature that even Orlok knows is out of touch with the modern audience. Here among the chrome cars, cheap candy and rolling film projector is where Targets’ bloody denouement brings these characters into conflict with Bobby Thompson, a clean-cut gun enthusiast whose character Bogdanovich modeled after the real-life mass murderer Charles Whitman, better known as The Texas Tower Sniper.
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Karen Ponzio
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Nov 1, 2023 9:54 am
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The Latino and Iberian Film Festival at Yale — a.k.a. LIFFY — commenced Monday night with a screening of the documentary film Una Mirada Honesta/An Honest Look, the story of Argentinian photographer Eduardo Longoni and his iconic images that changed history. It was a fitting way to begin the festival’s 14th year, as it has become known for its provocative and passionate presentation of films that open viewers’ eyes and hearts with stories often left untold elsewhere.
Drunk Film Festival Oakland The Continental Club Oakland Oct. 13, 2023
The last night of the sixth annual Drunken Film Festival took place at Oakland’s Historic Continental Club on a cozy Friday night, with zombies lurking in the wings.
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Synclaire Cruel
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Oct 23, 2023 11:23 am
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Chia Chong/Savannah College of Art and Design
Afrofuturism in Costume Design Ruth E. Carter National tour Through March 31, 2024
Ruth E. Carter: Afrofuturism in Costume Design, a colorful and informative touring exhibit of outfits designed to transport viewers back into the midst of some of the most popular movies over the past 30 years, mesmerized attendees at its recently-concluded four-month stop at Raleigh’s North Carolina Museum of Art before its current stop in Detroit. Carter’s ability to transform materials and fabrics into visually striking pieces generates a deeper appreciation for the art of costume design.
Stephen Farber interviewing Malcolm McDowell at 2023 screening event.
BEYONDFEST Aero Theater and Loz Feliz 3 Theater Sept. 26 to Oct. 10, 2023
CALIGULA: THEULTIMATECUT With special guests Malcolm McDowell and film critic/historian Thomas Negovan Moderated by critic/historian Stephen Farber Aero Theatre, Santa Monica Sept. 29, 2023
Beyond Fest returns to Los Angeles for two weeks’ worth of cinematic madness, just in time for Halloween. Billed as the biggest genre film festival in the United States, the annual event has been delighting crowds since 2013, with the 2023 edition screening a whopping 55 feature films, from low-budget debuts from around the world to restorations of classic movies and cult favorites.
One of the premiere events of the festival was the screening of a brand new version of the controversial 1979 film Caligula. Despite the movie’s scandalous reputation, the screening was far from the raincoat-and-Kleenex orgy of titillation one might have expected; instead, it was a celebration of the acting talents of Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren and the glorious sets of Danilo Donati.
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Karen Ponzio
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Oct 4, 2023 10:00 am
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Karen Ponzio Photo
For some people October means autumn is here, bringing with it pumpkin everything, apple picking, and sweater weather. For other people October means only one thing: it’s time to celebrate Halloween. Best Video Film and Cultural Center’s monthly film series is honoring the latter (though you can definitely purchase the requisite seasonal beverages there) with four horror movies, ones specifically chosen by their members.
John Waters was kicked out of NYU film school for smoking marijuana. Even that incubator for original filmmakers couldn’t handle him. Now, among people I know, announcing yourself as a graduate of NYU film school is a shorthand for being an uppity, social-climbing brat (I should know, I’m one of them). It’s so much cooler to be John Waters. He’s a degenerate and an iconoclast, making even the most daring artists look like uninspired conformists. In fact, I don’t know anyone who dislikes John Waters. If I did, I would think it was an easy tell that they were boring and had bad sex.
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RS Benedict
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Sep 26, 2023 10:03 am
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Fracesco Cordaro and Will Roane at the festival.
New York State International Film Festival The Linda/ WAMC Performing Arts Studio Albany, N.Y. Sept. 22 – 23
The eighth annual New York State International Film Festivalc elebrated small things. With all films under 30 minutes in length — some as short as three minutes — each entry had to keep its focus tight. Entrants examined the world on a micro scale, telling brief, quirky, intimate stories.
In Onur Yagiz’s Faith the Conqueror, a Turkish nerd smokes too much weed and inadvisably pursues the woman of his dreams. Eli Shapiro’s It’s a Dog offers a farcical glimpse at a balding man’s neuroses. In Allison Plante’s Tea Time, a young woman blurts out her same-sex attraction to her soon-to-be-former roommate as she packs her things to leave the apartment for good. We get only a glimpse of our characters and their inner and outer lives; the future of their relationship is uncertain. “No kiss,” Plante said during the post-screening Q&A. “Maybe later. But not now.”
