The Lie of IMAX Digital: The Dark Knight Rises Problem

UPDATE 7/16: Turns out, The Dark Knight Rises will be showing in 15/70 format at the Cinemark 17. One caveat: the theater is a digital IMAX retrofit. Which means it’s big and badass, but the Omni theater in Fort Worth is a solid bet for seeing DKR in the optimum…

5 Things It Will Kill You To Miss at Texas Frightmare Weekend

Being a huge Horror hound, not to mention Texas Frightmare Weekend veteran, my general advice would be to see and do everything! But obviously you only have limited time and one body (which hopefully stays unsevered throughout the three days) so allow me to help curate your TXFMW experience for…

Deep in the Heart of Texas with Richard Linklater’s Bernie.

Richard Linklater’s Bernie is the rarest of rarities: a truly unexpected film. It might be classified as a black comedy, for it deals with the murder of an 81-year-old woman in a fashion that is not exactly tragic. But unlike most movies that fall under that label, it never indulges…

Superegos Collide in the All-Star Avengers. Things Go Boom.

At the start of Joss Whedon’s long-awaited Marvel superhero supergroup flick, The Avengers, the Tesseract — a powerful, potentially dangerous glowing cube that fell to the ocean floor after Captain America (Chris Evans) liberated it from the Nazis in his movie last summer — is in the hands of NASA…

Brit Marling Preaches End Times in Sound of My Voice

Twentysomething Silver Lake couple Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius) talk their way into an unnamed cult that meets in the basement of a San Fernando Valley split-level in the middle of the night to follow the teachings of the enigmatic Maggie (Brit Marling). A supposedly sickly yet ethereally…

Why Our Favorite Indie Film House Will Screen The Avengers

The 81-year-old Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff may be known historically as the movie house that Howard Hughes built or the scene where police found Lee Harvey Oswald holed up on that fateful day in November, but for the past two years it’s been known as the place to go…

Texas Frightmare Weekend Takes Over A New Haunt

If you’re a gore geek like me or even just the general lover of the Horror genre, you’re going to want to clear your schedule because the Southwest’s premier Horror event, Texas Frightmare Weekend, is about to jumpstart its chainsaw and rip through the DFW Hyatt Regency. Every year, the…

Golden Queen’s Commando Takes Out The Trash

It happens every Tuesday night at Texas Theatre: The cinematic garbage disposal gets all jammed up. Some brave soul then must plunge his fist in to find the source of the rattle — please don’t flip the switch during this delicate time. The slimy disturbance could be anything — a…

Price Goes Up Tomorrow for Frightmare Weekend

What’s that, lady? You want to cover yourself in fake blood and pose in a prom photo with Anthony Michael Hall? Yeah, get in line. This weekend is Frightmare, a three-day celebration of gore, grindhouse and general film havoc. Maybe you’ve heard of a certain 20th Century Fox project called…

The Five-Year Engagement’s Humor Won’t Crack You Up

There is exactly one unexpected moment in the otherwise drearily predictable The Five-Year Engagement that, though little more than a throwaway line, at least adds a bit of charged political reality to puncture Nicholas Stoller’s limp, hermetic comedy of deferred nuptials. Tom (Jason Segel, who co-scripted with Stoller), a talented…

Traci Lords Halts The Devil Tonight At Texas Theatre

The devil must have been really busy in the early ’90s; there were a lot of trends and careers who’s successes could only be attributed to fiery soul relinquishment. Angel Martin in Shock ‘Em Dead, tonight’s Tuesday Night Trash movie at Texas Theatre, is no exception. Played by Stephen Quadros…

55 Movie Trends That Need to Die Now

There’s an over-arching theme in the show Battlestar Galatica that is an apt metaphor for Hollywood: “It happened before and it will happen again.” The “it” in Battlestar is the whole Machines-Become-Sentient-and-Kill-Humans-thing. But the catchy, ominous phrase could be viewed as a metaphor for Hollywood’s persistent ability to repeat mind-numbingly…

Deep Thoughts With RoboCop At the Texas Theatre

You a big fan of the cinematic sweet spot that existed between 1985 and 1995? Like, say, B-grade, man-in-fishmonster-suit horror? How ’bout tiny buzz-saw robot slashers? Pesticide-tripping exterminators uncovering secret insect intrigue? Yeah? Well, your Jesus was at Texas Theatre Saturday — looking rangy and awesome, wearing smoky, round, actor-emeritus…

DIFF Guide for Friday, April 20: Our Must-See Picks

If you’re still hanging on to that DIFF laminate after a week of intensive film screenings, we are so proud of you. Also, maybe take a shower and call a family member, because you probably smell like buttery popcorn substitute and those closest to you are concerned about your absence…

Dispatches From DIFF: Don’t Miss This Movie

Earlier this week I said Brooklyn Castle was probably the best film of the festival — well, I may have to amend that statement. While still topping the documentary charts, another horse has pulled ahead in the over-all category: the Korean blockbuster My Way. Selected as one of the festival’s…

DIFF Guide for Thursday, April 19: Our Must-See Picks

Hoodie? Check. Popcorn? Check. Complete list of films to see today at DIFF, seasoned with links to background information and brief descriptions of content? Double check! We’ve got our DIFF picks for Thursday, so prepare your cinematic socks to be rocked…

Lovers Try To Stay Above Water in The Deep Blue Sea

The Deep Blue Sea, the first fiction feature in a dozen years from the visionary British director Terence Davies, is a film about love that in no way reassures that love conquers all. Plumbing disquieting depth, Deep Blue Sea investigates the insoluble dilemma of romantic love: the expectation, contrary to…

Marley Stirs It Up

I spotted a bottle of something called Marley’s Mellow Mood, “a new line of 100 percent natural relaxation beverages,” in my neighborhood deli just a few hours after seeing Kevin Macdonald’s documentary on the reggae and Rasta emissary — a reminder of just how crassly the Jamaican star, who died…

Dispatches From DIFF: Reviews Of Yesterday’s Picks

So, we’re halfway through DIFF. Surely by this point you have your favorite seat in each theater (no, I won’t tell you mine, otherwise there will be a popcorn fight) and you’ve made friends with your fellow fest-goers. If not, you still have five more days and dozens of movies…