High Falls Film Festival

Our critic’s guide

The last few weeks have been grueling… for me. Oh, I’m sure the hardworking people over at the High Falls Film Festival offices have been logging an inhuman amount of hours putting the finishing touches on the festival dedicated to women in film. But I’m really more concerned with myself. Would it kill you programmers […]

Here’s a new definition of chick flick: edgy features; satirical shorts; political documentaries; movies about war, jail, sex, brothels, and wrestling. The film festival that celebrates “the accomplishments of women behind the camera” gets bigger and stronger each year. This year, there are more films (40), more famous guests (actors Joan Allen and Sally Kellerman, […]

For Alexander Payne, the wine that endlessly flows in his film Sideways is as celebrated and reviled as his characters. Each time a glass is raised — in celebration, in jest, in anger, or in sadness — this “character,” this bottle of wine, moves from the depths of the subplot to the forefront of the […]

Here’s a pretty staggering fact: The Audience Award winner from the first two runs of the High Falls Film Festival went on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Film five months later. Croatia’s No Man’s Land (2001) and Germany’s Nowhere in Africa (2002), which toppled favorites like perceived sure-thing Amélie and Zhang Yimou’s Hero, […]

<iJim Sheridan, USA, 114 minutes</i <iDryden Theatre, 7 p.m., Wednesday, November 5</i Jim Sheridan’s In America debuted over a year ago at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival, where it screened late enough in the 10-day fête to make me wonder whether the picture was really as good as it seemed, or if I was […]

Keywords: High Falls Film Festival ‘My Life Without Me’ Isabel Coixet, Spain/Canada, 106 minutes Little Theatre 2-5, 4 p.m., Saturday, November 8 Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet’s My Life Without Me, which she adapted from Nanci Kincaid’s short story Pretending the Bed is a Raft, is a lot like I Am Sam in that both films […]

Wednesday, November 5 Tupperware! Laurie Kahn-Leavitt, USA, 62 minutes Little Theatre 2-5, 7:15 p.m. Covering a lot of the same ground as 2001 ImageOut entry Lifetime Guarantee: Phranc’s Adventures in Plastic, this Kathy Bates-narrated documentary focuses much less on the Jewish lesbian folksinger angle as it shows the liberating effect Tupperware had on women in […]