A bitterly Good Night. The full list is posted, and it includes an earlier teased category of Italian films. In that showcase you’ll get a dusting off of two classics, Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful and Fellini’s 8 1/2, along with three newbies. Probably the buzziest film In the Texas…
Twenty minutes into the first full-length movie based on L. Frank Baum’s most beloved novel, a duck pukes into the face of Larry Semon, the star and director. Semon’s 1925 flop, titled The Wizard of Oz, opens and closes with a Geppetto-esque toymaker reading to his granddaughter from a well-loved…
It’s a bad omen when, early on in Oz the Great and Powerful, we learn that the full given name of its wizard is Oscar. That, of course, is also the name of the awards ceremony that star James Franco once presided over as calamitously as he does this sagging…
We can speak of climate change with a fair amount of certitude: shrinking Arctic ice cover, rising global temperatures and increased frequency of extreme weather events. Most of us acknowledge that things are getting worse faster than previously predicted, and that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions have likely played a major…
Every Wednesday, we find you five movies for you to check out over the coming week or weekend, from the latest wide release to weird local screenings to timely classics you can watch on your couch. Did we miss something? Let readers know in the comments. Now, Forager Screens tonight…
I’m still waiting on that POGS film… Knowing that Pulitzer Prize winning author and cartoonist Art Spiegelman created the Garbage Pail Kids trading card series, makes their existence so much sweeter. Still, I can’t help but imagine his reaction went he went to see The Garbage Pail Kids Movie world…
As episode eight opens, we follow Hannah down the street. She receives a text from Adam, which causes her to have a nervous tic, one we’ve never seen before. We’re reminded Hannah got an e-book deal, and the deadline is looming, with nary a word written. Hannah starts doing everything…
This week, the Dallas Film Society and the Angelika Film Center in Dallas will host a short retrospective of the films of South Korean director Park Chan-wook, starting Tuesday with Oldboy, winner of the Grand Prix award at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. It continues Wednesday with 2006’s Lady Vengeance…
It’s begun. The Dallas International Film Festival is rolling out its selections for this year’s fest, which will consume our minds and eyes from April 4 through April 14. The first 10 films were just announced, and two of them are products of filmmakers who get their mail delivered in…
There’s a reason, beyond basic Judd Apatow oversaturation, that hardly anyone went to see his mewl of middle-aged despair This Is 40. A movie about a marriage already in progress — as opposed to one about a marriage just waiting to happen, the province of the romantic comedy — is…
To paraphrase Stephen Sondheim, there are big, tall, terrible, fleshy, bulbous-headed giants in the sky in Jack the Giant Slayer. And what would a big-budget, mildly revisionist, 3-D spin on “Jack and the Beanstalk” be if those fearsome beasties didn’t somehow make it down to sea level, where a storybook…
Honestly, when it started six years ago, Californication was provocative, ballsy and fun, with laugh-out-loud dialogue and plenty of smart musings about love, sex, family and responsibility. Over five seasons, anti-hero Hank Moody (David Duchovny) has drank and fucked his way through a series of Hollywood writing jobs, all the…
Every Wednesday, we find you five movies for you to check out over the coming week or weekend, from the latest wide release to weird local screenings to timely classics you can watch on your couch. Did we miss something? Let readers know in the comments. Tommy Runs Thursday through…
Lee Pace isn’t a household name, but you may remember him as the star of the terrific but short-lived ABC series Pushing Daisies. He also appeared on the big screen recently, with roles in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Lincoln. Now it’s being reported that Pace will return to…
Non-golfers may not know much about David Feherty, but he’s worth 30 seconds of your allotted daily Google time. A former tour pro (and Dallas resident), he is now easily golf’s best television analyst, calling the game with honesty and wit and humanity that’s hard to find in any sport…
There have been quite a few detours on this season of Girls: Hannah and Joshua’s two-day brownstone romp, Adam and Ray’s trip to Staten Island last week, Hannah and Elijah’s cocaine-fueled trip around Brooklyn. This episode takes Hannah and Jessa on a train out to Manitou, to see Jessa’s estranged…
Sunday night, Hollywood’s Dolby Theater will see its seats fill with a bevy of A-listers as this year’s Oscars ceremony gets underway. Leading the field this year is Steven Spielberg’s historical drama, Lincoln, which has 12 nominations. Ang Lee’s Life of Pi has just one fewer, while the others all…
If Sundance signals the annual launch of American indie cinema’s new product line, the 63-year-old Berlin Film Festival, in mid-February, offers the year’s first major look at what the rest of the world has to offer. In addition to the 19-film official competition — this year presided over by jury…
There’s scant dialogue but plenty of eloquent storytelling in the five animated short films up for a 2013 Oscar, all of which — along with their live-action and documentary counterparts — will get a pre-award show release at Cinemark 17 on Friday. Save for a five-minute Simpsons segment (“Maggie Simpson…
Depending on your perspective, Zooey Deschanel is either the cutest, funniest, most adorable little retro-kookster on earth, or she’s an irritating try-hard with zero comedy chops. The only thing the world seems able to universally agree on is that Deschanel has nice bangs. As such, her sitcom — New Girl,…
When River Phoenix died in October, 1993, he was three weeks away from completing his performance in Dark Blood, an $8 million indie film that had already done five weeks of shooting on location in southern Utah. In this lurid modern film noir, Phoenix was cast as “Boy,” a mysterious,…
Every Wednesday, we find you five movies for you to check out over the coming week or weekend, from the latest wide release to weird local screenings to timely classics you can watch on your couch. Did we miss something? Let readers know in the comments. When I Rise Screens…
