Feb 01, 2009 Cinema Winter 2009 - Anticipated Albums of 2009

The 2008 Jury Prize winner in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section, Tokyo Sonata is a departure for Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who is perhaps best known in the States for his creepy horror films Cure and Pulse. More

Feb 01, 2009 Cinema Winter 2009 - Anticipated Albums of 2009

Max Solomon (Spencer Berger) is such a poor writer that a performance of his play “The Onion Dance” hospitalizes his grandfather. More

Dec 09, 2008 Cinema Web Exclusive

If Anne Hathaway’s insolent, attention-craving character Kym seems intolerable after only a few scenes, and you begin to question whether you can spend another 100 minutes with her, then screenwriter Jenny Lumet and director Jonathan Demme have you right where they want you. More

Dec 09, 2008 Cinema Web Exclusive

Australia’s The Black Balloon has its heart in the right place. The film observes autism through the eyes of Thomas, a 15-year-old boy (Rhys Wakefield) who struggles to accept his older brother Charlie’s (Luke Ford) disability, at an age when adolescents’ own self-consciousness becomes magnified. More

Nov 01, 2008 Cinema Year End 2008 - Best of 2008

As a whole, Che, which comprises two Spanish-language films over two hours each, is this decade’s most imposing film by an American director to receive theatrical distribution. More

May 16, 2007 Cinema Web Exclusive

Writer-director John Carney, a former bassist for The Frames, has said that, while being a fan of the Hollywood musical, he wanted to modernize the genre in such a way that the YouTube generation would not recognize Once as a musical. Whether or not this film is a musical is debatable, but what Carney has kept intact, sans lavish production numbers, is the sweet romantic spirit of people and community banding together for a shared cause. More

Apr 26, 2007 Cinema Web Exclusive

Picture the biggest, most rundown waterfront trailer park retirement community imaginable, fill it with elderly eccentrics, slap on some Vegas-style kitsch and you’ve got a good idea of the Salton Sea, the Imperial Valley, Calif. locale outside of San Diego and Palm Springs that once was a booming resort town.  More

Apr 26, 2007 Cinema Web Exclusive

Red Road, the debut feature by English director Andrea Arnold, is a fascinating, skillfully directed drama that operates within the framework of a thriller, but the film is so methodically paced during its first two acts, by the time the mysteries begin to unfold, the thrill is gone. More

Apr 26, 2007 Cinema Web Exclusive

Filmgoers who remember Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves (1996) and Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration (1998) might feel a twinge of nostalgia while viewing After the Wedding, a captivating Danish drama that was a Best Foreign Language Film nominee at this year’s Academy Awards. More