The feature films get most of the attention at High Falls and pretty much every other festival in the world. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore the short films. Look at it this way: The packaging might be smaller, but the quality is just as good. Look at John Stockton, or Napoleon, or even […]
Jon Popick
Posted inMovies
Bondage, sex, and monsters
Whenever a prestigious juried film festival invents a special prize, everyone should take notice. Michael Moore’s Bowling For Columbine was the first documentary allowed to play at Cannes in over four decades, and it was so impressive, the jury created an award for it to win. In other cases, special award recipients have much darker […]
Posted inMovies
It ain’t easy being a spoiled teenager
The suits over at the WB network must be staggering around their offices in shock. Roger Avary’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ The Rules of Attraction takes two of the net’s biggest stars — James Van Der Beek and Jessica Biel — and uses them in family-friendly scenes involving coke-snorting, masturbation, an orgy, and hot […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
Nine days of cinema, ten years in the making
ImageOut, Rochester’s Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival, celebrates ten years of grassroots success this week with nine days of action-packed cinema unspooling at three theaters in the downtown area. What follows is our take on some of this year’s features and shorts programs. Be sure to consult the full ImageOut schedule, and check […]
Posted inMovies
Dumb and Dumber for the art-house crowd
Dumb and Dumber for the art-house crowd Imagine Of Mice and Men if George and Lenny were both boobs, The Odd Couple if Felix and Oscar were Norwegian, or Dumb and Dumber without the scatological humor, and you’ll most likely conjure up Elling, one of the overlooked nominees for Best Foreign Language Film in the […]
Posted inMovies
Mostly formulaic, but still a tasty treat
Yeah, we’ve seen it before: single, self-centered, career-minded woman acquires, through generally wacky means, somebody else’s sassy kid. Adult and child initially butt heads, but eventually help each other grow emotionally. When this premise is done with no thought, you get something like Bogus with Whoopi Goldberg and Haley Joel Osment. When it’s done right, […]
Posted inMovies
More dispatches from Toronto
Let us pick up where we left off last week at the 27th Toronto International Film Festival, which came to a close September 14. As with last week’s round-up, release dates, where available, appear in parentheses. Day Five (Fractured Family Tales) A Leave It To Beaver feel these films had not. Moonlight Mile (November 4) […]
Posted inMovies
Dispatches from Toronto
The 27thToronto International Film Festival, which continues to unspool even as you read this, is many things to many people. For some, it’s an early indicator of which upcoming films might be Oscar contenders (five of the last six winners of the People’s Choice Award for the audience’s favorite film have gone on to nab […]
Posted inSpecial Sections
Headline: Movies: Great expectations, after summer’s best
p> Credit: Text: Records tumbled, glowing reviews were dispensed like so much sunscreen, and we still had room for mindless junk like Eight Legged Freaks and XXX. Thanks to pictures like Road To Perdition, Signs and Minority Report, the summer of 2002 was certainly the best in recent memory. But what about the fall? […]
Posted inSpecial Sections
Television: Reality is dead; cops, docs, and lawyers live on
With 32 new shows set to kick off in the next couple of months, City thought you might require some sort of guide to help you separate the wheat from the chaff. Otherwise, how would you be able to tell the difference between Do Over (WB, 8:30 p.m. Thursday) and That Was Then (ABC, […]
Posted inMovies
Dispatches from Toronto
The 27thToronto International Film Festival, which continues to unspool even as you read this, is many things to many people. For some, it’s an early indicator of which upcoming films might be Oscar contenders (five of the last six winners of the People’s Choice Award for the audience’s favorite film have gone on to nab […]
Posted inMovies
Shaking up our expectations
Shohei Imamura’s Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, which screens this Friday at the Dryden Theatre, is, at least at its foundation, remarkably similar to his critically acclaimed film The Eel. Both movies deal with a middle-aged, white-collar office drone who leaves a big city life to take up with a bunch of rural kooks […]
