A look at the 25th Annual Rochester LGBT Film & Video Festival The inaugural ImageOut kicked off in 1993; Bill Clinton had just begun his first term as President, Nelson Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize, Beanie Babies hit the market, and Donald Trump was an unnecessarily famous real-estate developer. Now, 25 years later … […]
Dayna Papaleo
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Film review: ‘The Fate of the Furious’
What the hell, Vin Diesel? No, I’m not mad that you’ve ignored my four prior letters; I know you’re busy cranking out forgettable cash-grabs like “The Last Witch Hunter” or whatever sequel you’ve decided to beat to death. But why am I only now learning that your Dominic Toretto character is not actually of Italian […]
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Rat tales
Movies about gangsters have long been irresistible to both the storytellers and the audience, and I think the reason they remain so eternally compelling is that we viewers are allowed to have our cake and then chase it with a $7 soda. We get to live vicariously through morally bankrupt men – and they are […]
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Film Review: “American Ultra”
I don’t remember absolutely everything that happened last month, so I suppose it’s possible that at some point during July, I was recruited by a shadowy government agency, trained as an efficient killing machine, and then deposited into my humdrum little life after a thorough memory wipe, not knowing when or how I’ll be activated […]
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Film Review: “Straight Outta Compton”
As one whose job it is to think too much about movies, I gotta admit that I was a little wary of “Straight Outta Compton,” the new film about pioneering West Coast rappers N.W.A. There’s rarely any variation in the plot trajectory of a musical biopic — adversity, opportunity, prosperity, conflict, redemption — and the […]
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Film Review: “People Places Things”
If you’ve ever seen “The Flight of the Conchords,” then you’d be forgiven for assuming that the goofy Jemaine Clement (he’s the one with the glasses) couldn’t possibly pull off believable dramatic acting in a leading-man role. You’d also be wrong, as evidenced by his lovely performance in writer-director Jim Strouse’s “People Places Things,” a […]
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Film Review: “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”
When filmmaker Guy Ritchie first hit the scene in the late 90’s with his flashy cinematic calling card, “Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels,” he seemed like England’s answer to Quentin Tarantino, though possibly just an amped-up knockoff. (Plus Ritchie presented us with Jason Statham, really a gift that keeps on giving.) But in the […]
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Film Review: “Dark Places”
Acting is sort of an unspoken agreement between the thespian and the audience: He or she pretends to be someone else, and we pretend we don’t know about the pretending. Unfortunately, however, there are some actors whose stratospheric celebrity is making it increasingly difficult for us to hold up our end of the bargain. George […]
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Film Review: “The Frontier”
Take a bunch of people with questionable morals (or preferably no morals at all), toss them in an isolated spot, add a sprinkle of stolen cash, and wait to see who gets stabbed in the back (or shot, or strangled … you get the idea): It’s a classic film noir setup and one that director […]
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Film Review: “Paper Towns”
For most of us, there is The One. (And I don’t mean that in a “Matrix”-y way, nerds.) You fall completely under his or her alluring spell, and even if there’s no fairy tale ending for the two of you, your time in their orbit inspired you to be daring and be vulnerable and be […]
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Film Review: “Trainwreck”
It’s Amy Schumer’s world
now, people, and it’s about f**king time.
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Film Review: “Mr. Holmes”
For nearly as long as they’ve been making movies, they’ve been making movies about Sherlock Holmes. Initially appearing in print in 1887, Holmes first hit the screen in 1900, and since then Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective has been portrayed in more than 220 films. So why does a brilliant, rude, and occasionally drug-addled […]
