Texas has spawned dozens of low-budget horror and sci-fi films since the 1960s. Unfortunately most of them suck, although not in the ways most normal, well adjusted filmgoers would think. B-movie fans are some of the most forgiving audiences in the world and will gladly let glaring deficiencies in budget…
You know what sounds nice? Lounging on a picnic blanket, with a couple of sandwiches from Jimmy’s Food Store and a glass of wine, while watching good guy Humphrey Bogart suck face with Lauren Bacall. Apparently that’s not just me, either, because the good people at Klyde Warren Park just…
Just a few weeks after the Dallas International Film Festival packed up its reels and stuffed them into storage, the USA Film Festival has arrived, beginning today at the Angelika Film Center. Although, you may not remember it was happening there are plenty of movie screenings, talk-backs and events for…
Has it ever occurred to contemporary commercial filmmakers that maybe audiences could take a movie’s word for it that a character has been tortured? That perhaps implication and skilled acting could communicate the idea with sufficient power, and that we might all be spared the screaming and limb-breaking and slow-motion…
Going bald is the best thing that ever happened to Jude Law. Britain’s prettiest export did the best he could with his burden of good looks. He played a genetic ideal in Gattaca, a robotic ideal in A.I. Artificial Intelligence and in The Talented Mr. Ripley, his golden god perfection…
The promise of seeing Scarlett Johansson fully nude is probably enough to lure lots of people into Jonathan Glazer’s alien-among-us fantasy Under the Skin, and the vision doesn’t disappoint: Her figure, seen in long shot, is a grand and glowing thing. But her nakedness is the opposite of a sleazy…
Sometimes it’s helpful to know certain details about how a film has come together. And sometimes it’s just so much information. Transcendence, the directorial debut of Christopher Nolan’s go-to cinematographer, Wally Pfister, was shot on film rather than digitally, as most big Hollywood movies (and nearly all small ones) are…
When Wally Pfister won an Oscar for Inception, his sixth film with Christopher Nolan, he went home and put the statuette on his mantel. “And then it moved to the corner, and then my office, and then the closet because you go away for a few months, and then it…
The critics heaping raves on Fargo, the new 10-part series on cable’s FX channel, keep describing its lead actress Allison Tolman as “an unknown.” But Dallas theatergoers know her well. She’s that funny, bold performer who starred in plays and musicals at Second Thought Theatre (a company she co-founded with…
It’s everywhere. The horribly catchy Oscar-winning song from the cartoon film that everyone saw except you. Until last year, Disney hadn’t made a movie anyone cared about in over a decade. When Frozen came out, no one could possibly have predicted its quick rise to ubiquity. But now you can’t…
It started as Texas Frightmare Weekend: Three days of horror flicks at the DFW Alamo Drafthouse alongside celebrity appearances by the likes of filmmakers, writers, make-up artists and stars. Then, it grew to an entire week of screenings, panels and opportunities to meet everyone from the original Creature from the…
Two years after the private, rough cut screening of what was then called The Starck Project, which played to a packed theater at the Angelika during DIFF 2012, director Michael Cain is ready to unveil his finished product. The Starck Club debuts this Saturday at Texas Theatre, and although that…
The most perfect works of art are those suspended between conception and realization, the ones that seize you up with how great they’re gonna be. (Well, those and Busby Berkeley numbers.) Alejandro Jodorowsky’s daft, daring, surrealist, possibly impossible adaptation of Dune, Frank Herbert’s spice-mining science-fiction novel that later proved unadaptable…
A grave has been freshly dug in the opening shot of director Gareth Evans’ ultra-violent Indonesian flick The Raid 2. It’s a start, but Evans is going to need 400 more. In the first few minutes, Evans dispenses with three-quarters of the survivors of 2012’s The Raid: Redemption, the writer-director’s…
There’s been a lot of speculation and serious concern about the direction of the next movie in the Star Wars saga and rightfully so. Remember all the giddy anticipation that bubbled out of our collective consciousness in the days leading up to the release of the first Star Wars prequel…
The week of Conan’s Dallas reign has come to end. I’m so fucking sick of his creepy face. Yeah, I said it. Don’t get me wrong, Conan’s great. But he’s taken over my life. I have people in my Facebook feed posting selfies with him or live Tweeting the whole…
Everyone’s favorite ultra-budget dragon tease mega-series returns for its fourth season on Sunday night. We’ve constructed a drinking game in its honor. I would opt for a light mead. Not wildfire. Will Daenerys actually make it across the sea? WILL JOFFREY EVER DIE? How amazing is Brienne of Tarth? Will…
When Chris Dowling began writing his film Produce, he didn’t know he was writing a film about down syndrome. “I wanted to write a story about faith,” he says. “And then as I was working on the film’s narrative, I realized there had to be a character with this childlike…
Before we continue, I should give you a few reasons to hate me: The only time I’ve been called into jury duty, it was iced out. I still have my tonsils. Oh, and this week my job includes writing about Conan O’Brien’s stop in Dallas. I’ve always been a Jimmy…
By Mark Walters Earlier this year, the Texas Film Awards honored Richardson native David Gordon Green for his achievements as a director. The 38-year-old writer and director launched his film career with the indie flick George Washington in 2000 and followed that with more independent work, as well as mainstream…
Tucked into a pocket of his workout sweats, Steve Rogers — aka Captain America, the serum-enhanced Yankee Doodle Dynamo who’s spent the last six decades in deep freeze — keeps a notebook of cultural beats he’s missed: Star Wars, Marvin Gaye, Thai food. If only he’d added ’70s conspiracy thrillers…
As its subtitle suggests, one reason Errol Morris’ 2003 documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara proved so resonant is that its subject was partly a proxy for his most notorious professional successor, the decidedly less available Donald Rumsfeld. “I don’t do quagmires,”…
