Even if the mainstream has squandered media’s powers, television, film and new advancements in virtual technology still possess the amazing ability to transport audiences to new places and perspectives. So many new and exciting ventures are exploring these growing art forms that the Dallas VideoFest can’t share it with just…
Films like Troll 2, Plan Nine from Outer Space and Birdemic: Shock and Terror have amassed global fanbases for their terribleness, but The Room has become by critical standards the Citizen Kane of “best worst movies.” The Room doesn’t just aspire for greatness and fails. It falls so hard that…
Fans of John Cusack can stop waiting outside of his house with a boombox to see him and instead buy a ticket for the Majestic Theatre, where he’ll appear alongside a screening of his 1989 film Say Anything on May 19. Following the presentation of Cusack’s star-making role as Lloyd…
The 91st Academy Awards are a month away, but this is still barely enough time to plan the perfect viewing party. Only 30 days to buy a sheet of poster board and create a betting bracket for categories, like longest political acceptance speech. A mere 720 hours to buy snack…
Dallas visual artist Said Abusaud believes that art should never have an answer and that it should always be in the form of a question. He carries this theme in all of his work, lacing hidden messages in each piece. Viewers would be smart to keep that in mind when…
When filmmaker Todd Jenkins released his independent horror comedy film Cherokee Creek last summer about a group of horny bachelors whose party in the woods gets crashed by a furious Sasquatch, he released it on his terms. He controlled the script, filming and editing process. He chose the premiere date and…
A new year, for some, may mean extreme change and a mad dash to The Container Store. When Marie Kondo’s Netflix series Tidying Up kicked off Jan. 1, the show brought new meaning to the phrase “thin is in” as the tiny, Japanese decluttering guru coached distraught couples into getting…
The Dallas film festival scene has exploded in a short time. It’s gotten so big that occasionally they occupy the same space on the calendar. “A few years back, we had a situation where a couple of festivals fell on the same date, which of course is not great,” film…
Kim Gatlin might have been the last person to learn Good Christian Books is headed back to TV. Good Christian Bitches is a book Gatlin wrote in 2008 about a divorced woman who returns home to a wealthy Dallas suburb after spending years in godless Southern California. In 2012, Darren Star…
While working in the electronics department of a North Texas Walmart, Brandon Lewis used his homemade comedy shows to lure customers. Now, his DVD is selling on Walmart shelves across the nation, and he’s working on a second one. “[My movies] helped me sell TVs,” says the 37-year-old Dallas filmmaker…
It was a terrible year in so many ways, but onscreen, with shows including Sharp Objects, My Brilliant Friend, Better Call Saul, The Americans and Atlanta, it sparkled
The movie experiences I treasure most from this year found me sharing moments and laughs and tears with strangers who, just before and after the house lights dimmed, I might have been arguing with on Twitter
The art houses and Drafthouses again pull more than their fair share of the burden of quality, but my No. 2 (and many people’s No. 1) is a straight-up Netflix production, already available to watch on your phone
Hollywood now begrudgingly must honor a company committed to upending the business model of theatrical distribution, but it’s hard to gainsay Netflix’s strategy in this instance
One of the best science classes your tween will actually stay awake for is just one Netflix subscription away. Brainchild, a new Netflix series produced by Pharrell Williams, offers science lessons that vary from debunking the five-second rule to the psychology behind social media. Whether Brainchild is exploring the ocean…
At times, as it dissolves between scenes of its cast as literal toy dolls machine-gunning Nazis in the made-up Belgian town of Marwen, Zemeckis’ movie seems an inquisition into the limits of the director’s own imagination
Don’t look to Vice for psychology or even a sense of presence; McKay uses the Cheneys’ grim unknowability as an excuse not to bother going for either
Leder’s film mostly devotes itself to the future Supreme Court justice’s first world-shaking sex discrimination case, 1972’s Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue: Ginsburg and her husband … argued against a discriminatory statute before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
Baldwin’s central story, dialogue and time-jumping narrative structure are all in place, but so, too, is a sumptuous visual style that serves to deepen the novelist’s themes of racial injustice and the powerful countering force of love
With the quickest blink or nervy glance, Roberts communicates to us both what her character, an ordinary woman named Holly Burns, has convinced everyone around her to think she’s feeling but also all of her secret doubts, fury and anguish
True to the spirit of the chipper, somewhat aimless live-action Disney day killers that inspired it, Rob Marshall’s Mary Poppins Returns gets better the further it wanders from its actual story.
Not incidental to Aquaman’s pleasures is its vision of a mixed-race hero, played by a mixed-race actor, fighting to protect and understand clashing aspects of his heritage
