Film

There’s something magnetic about watching a great athlete come to life on screen. Maybe it’s the roar of the crowd recreated with surround sound. Maybe it’s seeing the weight of pressure behind the highlight reels. Or maybe it’s just that sports, with all their heartbreak and triumph, make perfect drama. It’s no wonder so many…

TIME AND TIME AGAIN, THIS FILM IS WILD, WITTY, AND WICKEDLY FUNNY Here’s a British delight that serves up a deliciously daffy mix of cunning comedy and science fiction—let’s call it “Sly-Fi,” a perfectly fitting term for this kooky genre blend. The triumphant mockumentary, Time Travel Is Dangerous, dares to be loopy and over the…

THIS FILM IS LIVING LARGE WITH HUGE AMOUNTES OF PLEASURE AND CREATIVITY As sweet and as rich as the high-calorie concoctions the lovable lead character covets and consumes, the stop-motion animated film Living Large is a treat, but the sympathetic portrait of this sad sack doesn’t become saccharine. Twelve-year-old Ben, a burdened, bullied, body-shamed boy…

A KINGDOM OF RICHES If you think that a survivor story on film about a boy and his dog battling the odds and a myriad of dangers will only keep you interested and involved if it looks rugged and realistic, is fueled by a rarely stopping barrage of heart-stopping chills and thrills, tragedy and terror,…

HOME COURT: HOOPS, HURDLES AND HEART The probable target audience for Home Court consists of those who find joy in playing basketball themselves or those who happily watch from the stands or on television. (Right now, college and professional games dominate TV schedules—it’s called March Madness.) But what if you’re not particularly thrilled by the…

I was a teen in the ’70s and I can assure you that everybody in Europe over 13 who wasn’t living under a rock knew something about the Butter Scene in Last Tango in Paris, the 1972 film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. You could not escape the despicable…

At this point, the success of a gay coming-of-age story can be measured most acutely by its tendency to fall into tropes, or its ability to transcend them. In the canon of gay films, the coming out tale has been told ad nauseam. Some of the most trite, straight-palatable representation has come in this form,…

OF MICE AND PENS It’s in the name: comics are supposed to be comical. The funny pages are a place for lasagna-craving kitties, pet pilots and friendly tigers — certainly not the stage on which to unpack heavy emotions or examine brutal histories. Right? Well, Art Spiegelman would beg to differ. And while the name…

YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED More than 20 years ago, a young teenager from Boca Raton, Florida, became the first person in the United States to receive an implanted microchip made by Applied Digital Solutions, a radio identification (RFID) chip like those long used in pets. The “VeriChip” contained a tiny radio transmitter and bits of…

Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story, which premiered on Hallmark on November 30, blends the warmth of the holiday season with the passionate sports culture of Kansas City. The film celebrates both romance and the deep-rooted connection the city has with the Kansas City Chiefs, offering a unique narrative for Chiefs fans and holiday movie…

MAKE ROOM FOR ROOM TAKEN New to Ireland, a young Nigerian man named Isaac (endearing Gabriel Adewusi) is down on his luck in present day Dublin. Unable to find steady housing, he ends up at a shelter that cannot help him. After another uncomfortable night on the streets, he has a chance encounter at a…

VIRTUAL VIRTUOSITY: HAMLET FOR THE GAMERS Jokes thrive on bringing together the incongruous, and perhaps that’s why Grand Theft Hamlet is, at its best, fucking hilarious. The premise is simple yet audacious: what if the bizarre, glitchy bodies and hyper-violent, sensory-releasing spectacle of a video game like Grand Theft Auto (GTA) were used to stage…

AN EVERY LITTLE THING OF BEAUTY The most amazing thing about the recurring slow-motion sequences of hovering hummingbirds in Every Little Thing is the stillness of their tiny heads, even as their wings flap and their little bodies shift in air. As Terry Masear tells us, among other remarkable things, the wings of a hummingbird…

All I can do is be me, whoever that is. — Bob Dylan A great old adage puts it this way: “All that is truly original appears ugly at first.” That’s been proven true for every new form of art and music, most appropriately during  the meteoric rise of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, whose early career is…