Make no mistake; Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is not as ambiguous as its title suggests. While it is indeed a work shrouded in murky atmosphere and high-minded poetry, at its core, David Lowery’s directorial breakthrough remains a classic tale of love, bondage and promises kept. Lowery tells his story with a lens so creatively visionary […]
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Silent no more
It’s amazing that it was ever made in the first place. The film, rediscovered by the Oklahoma Historical Society, tells a four-way love story but also shows the lost way of life of its actors — about 300 Kiowas and Comanches. Those traditions were discouraged when the film was shot in July 1920 in the […]
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Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
This meteoric rise and fall is chronicled in Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie, a documentary that both celebrates and vilifies its subject, because it tells the truth. Mort would’ve loved it; Mort would’ve hated it. I love it. Predictably, directors Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller and Jeremy Newberger gain much mileage from the prodigious […]
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The Mole Man of Belmont Avenue
Co-directors/co-writers/co-producers Mike Bradecich and John LaFlamboy also co-star as the Mugg brothers, slackers who run the crappy abode where a mole man (Justin DiGiacomo) lurks the halls for dogs and cats to consume, before moving up the food chain to humans. Any ingenuity begins and ends with the title; Bradecich and LaFlamboy mug(g) their way […]
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The Haunting of Helena
Newly divorced, Sophia (Harriet MacMasters-Green) moves with her young daughter, Helena (bland first-timer Sabrina Jolie Perez), to one of those incredible old apartment buildings in south Italy. In the basement, Helena takes a fancy to an armoire with deep scratch marks on the doors’ insides, so they have it moved into the girl’s room. In […]
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Stories We Tell
In this intensely personal, potentially embarrassing work, actress-turned-director Sarah Polley (Take This Waltz) gathers her brothers, sisters, father and family friends in order to piece together a portrait of her late mother, Diane, who died of cancer when Sarah still a child. That alone is hardly remarkable enough to merit a feature-length look. Note, however, […]
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Running Deer
“I was going to business school, and I had the opportunity to work on a film, so I moved to Panama for three months and worked as a production assistant, and that’s when I really caught the films bug,” Green said. “So, eventually, I bought a camera and traveled around the world, doing different little […]
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The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond
The horror film begins in 1927 Turkey, where an excavation unearths cave etchings of the great god Pan, which somehow inspires one of the explorers to craft a board game based on what they found. Skip to present-day Maine, where that board game is found in a lakeside cabin by — surprise! — a bunch […]
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Now You See Me
In this summer’s sleeper hit, four magicians of varying specialties and egos are brought together by a mysterious, hoodied benefactor. Played by Jesse Eisenberg (30 Minutes or Less), Woody Harrelson (Seven Psychopaths), Isla Fisher (The Great Gatsby) and Dave Franco (21 Jump Street), they perform a live trick to end all tricks: robbing a bank […]
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Blancanieves
While not achieving the same storybook ending, Spain’s Blancanieves is every bit a celebration of the cinema as The Artist, this one is arguably more accessible because it plays in the currently in-vogue sandbox of fairy tales: Snow White and the Huntsman, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and Jack the Giant Slayer among them. In finding inspiration in the Brothers Grimm version of Snow […]