Muscular and involving, Christopher Smith’s medieval adventure film Black Death is a satisfying throwback of sorts — a tense, character-driven period piece that is at once an action film and an act of historical reexamination, with a dash of slow burn horror and spiritual rumination to boot. Eddie Redmayne plays Osmund, a monk in a small bubonic plague-ridden hamlet in rural England. Cloistered from the decimation somewhat, he carries on a forbidden love affair with a young woman (Kimberley Nixon) from his home town. After dispatching her back to their village in order to escape the plague, Osmund is tasked with […]
EDITOR’S NOTE, May 28, 2012: At the time of this blog post, all the below 25 films were available on Amazon Prime. Now, a year later, we have been informed by our readers that a number of them are no longer listed on the service. We apologize for any inconvenience, but, as we are learning, streaming windows can be short, and films can rotate on and off the various services. It’s thus possible that missing titles could return in the near future. In the meantime, we’ll work on another post with an entirely up-to-date selection of films. Amazon has dipped […]
The Tribeca Film Festival today announced their 2011 world narrative and documentary lineup as well as introducing a new out-of- competition sidebar, Viewpoints, which highlights international cinema. A total of 45 features were unveiled for the 10th edition, taking place April 20-May 1, from a record number of over 5,600 submissions. The fest also introduced at a press conference today, according to indieWIRE, new awards that will be handed out this year from the competition slate: achievements in cinematography, screenwriting, editing and Best New Director awards for narrative and doc sections. The remaining features will be announced next week. Last […]
James Gunn’s Super is a demented real-life superhero action picture with a committed, out-there performance by Ellen Page and an engaging, improbably heartfelt one by Rainn Wilson. The film receives its U.S. premiere at SXSW and opens a few weeks later from IFC. Check out the trailer.
The South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival revealed today that its closing night film this year will be the world premiere of Bill Bob Thornton‘s documentary on Willie Nelson, The King of Luck. They also announced additional titles to the fest, including a work-in-progress screening of Bridesmaids, starring Kristen Wiig and produced by Judd Apatow, and a short from Harmony Korine. More info on the closing night film and additional titles can be found below. SXSW will take place March 11-19 in Austin, Texas. Read full list of features here; Midnight, SXFantastic and shorts here. CLOSING NIGHT FILM The […]
Korea’s love affair with genre film continues unabated in the hands of cult favorite Kim Jee-woon, the versatile 46-year-old writer-director of A Bittersweet Life (revenge thriller), The Good, the Bad, and the Weird (Eastern Western), and the award-winning A Tale of Two Sisters (ghost story). This avatar of Extreme Asian cinema certainly has his share of fans at home and abroad—a major retrospective of Kim’s work, “Severely Damaged: The Cinema of Kim Jee-woon,” ends a five-day run at Brooklyn’s BAM Rose Cinemas this evening—but his latest ultra-stylish provocation, I Saw the Devil, made the censors queasy. Several minutes of the […]
At the Oscars, host Anne Hathaway said it was the cinematic year of lesbians. At the Spirit Awards, host Joel McHale said it was the year of cunnilingus. But this year at CineKink, the range of filmic sexual expression is, as always, more varied. Now in its 11th edition, Cinekink kicks off tonight at the Taj Lounge with a program of performance and short films before moving to the Anthology Film Archives tomorrow for four days of screenings. A closing night party will be held on Sunday, March 6. Each year I ask Cinekink director Lisa Vandever to make a […]
Josh Radnor, the writer-director-actor of, happythankyoumoreplease, has a day job: he stars on the hit CBS sitcom, How I Met Your Mother. (Radnor plays the titular “I”— perhaps the most famous “I” in pop-culture since Withnail & I.) happythankyoumoreplease is an immensely likeable New York ensemble film about young people trying to negotiate love and responsibility, and its Audience Award win at Sundance in 2010 marks Radnor, who makes his directorial debut with the movie, as a filmmaker to watch. happythankyoumoreplease features a number of outstanding performances by actors including Malin Akerman, Tony Hale, Zoe Kazan, Kate Mara, Pablo Schreiber, […]
“We want to encourage people to make good documentaries because we feel like there’s not enough good explaining in the world.” That’s The Economist Film Project’s editorial director, Gideon Lichfield (pictured right), about the recently announced partnership between the British weekly and the PBS News Hour. Beginning April, that “good explaining” will arrive in the form of segments on the PBS News Hour that will include six-to-eight minute clips from full-length and short documentaries as well as related discussions by the anchors, outside experts and, sometimes, the filmmakers. The Economist Film Project is currently in the midst of a submission […]
Originally posted online on July 7, 2010. The Kids Are All Right is nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress (Annette Bening), Best Supporting Actor (Mark Ruffalo) and Best Original Screenplay (Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg). It’s been eight years since Lisa Cholodenko’s last feature film (six if you count her TV adaptation of Dorothy Allison’s novel Cavedweller), but for the 46-year-old writer-director of 1998’s High Art (winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance) and 2002’s Laurel Canyon (starring Frances McDormand and Christian Bale) the time has, if anything, only sharpened her wits and powers of empathic observation, not […]