Here are some quick U.S. stats: White women won the vote in 1920; some Native American women could vote in 1924, while the rest could not until 1947; Asian-American women first voted in 1952; and black women had to wait until the 1960s to freely exercise this fundamental right. But…
You’re right not to trust a film critic who calls a move stunning. But let me say this about Human Flow, the epic new documentary surveying the scope of the global refugee crisis, from Chinese artist/activist Ai Weiwei: It stunned me, in the truest sense of the word. Again and…
One year, back in the early 1990s, an uncle of mine didn’t show up to our family Christmas. I was only 10 and didn’t understand his sudden departure and why nobody would speak of it. A year later, I was at his funeral. He was a playwright and actor in…
Francis Lee’s stark, striking God’s Own Country is one of several significant films this year to depict hard-edged men softening, opening up, finding the courage to admit that everything they need to get through this life isn’t already inside them. The protagonist, raw-eyed farm boy Johnny (Josh O’Connor), has inherited…
Maggie Betts’ Novitiate bears all the signs of an exceptional talent. It follows the experiences of Cathleen (Margaret Qualley), a teenager who enters a convent in the early 1960s just as the Catholic Church was starting to undergo the reforms of Vatican II. The title refers to the girls’ yearlong…
“I wish I could live through something,” the title character laments to her mother in the opening scene of writer/director Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird. Played with comical intensity by Saoirse Ronan, 17-year-old Lady Bird — nee Christine — is too young to realize that she is inescapably living through something,…
My Friend Dahmer, from a graphic memoir of the same name by the pseudonymous Derf Backderf, is a kind of coming-of-age tale that dissects a troubled kid’s descent into murder. Backderf was a high-school pal of the boy who would grow up to become the serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey…
Despite the bright cinematography, there’s something quaint and comforting about this film and its brand of old-fashioned storytelling …
Gilbert Gottfried’s nasally obnoxiousness has wormed its way in (and out) of America’s hearts for decades — through his stand-up comedy, his voice-acting work as Aladdin’s Iago and Aflec’s duck, and his epically crude rendition of The Aristocrats joke, his too-soon Japanese tsunami jokes (which got him fired from that…
When I first saw Brett Morgen’s 2002 documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture, I was shocked that the film somehow matched the rollicking, mercurial energy of its subject, producer Robert Evans. Morgen reimagined the use of archival footage and voiceover, and the style he pioneered has now been mimicked…
Hello Again tasks its cast with impassioned miming of a panoply of sex acts, the singers conjugating each other like verbs in foreign language class
Before any questions are asked, Tracy Morgan is already off and running. “We love Miami, me and my wife. My wife wants to go to Versace and eat dinner one night. I want you to print that. My wife, Megan Morgan, wants to eat at Versace.”
When same-sex marriage became legal in Finland this past March, the government celebrated by releasing an official emjoi — a leather-clad man with a drooping mustache and a police-style cap emblazoned with the word “Tom.” No explanation was necessary, for “Tom” was clearly a nod to Tom of Finland —…
For all his reputation as a capital-A Auteur, Todd Haynes has always demonstrated impressive stylistic versatility. The Sirkian pastiche of Far from Heaven is a far cry from the lo-fi expressionism of Poison, and the music video wonderland of Velvet Goldmine has relatively little in common with the fractured minimalism…
It’s not enough that the sitting president will hate Rob Reiner’s LBJ, but that’s not nothing, either. Here’s a portrait of a resolutely unlovable vulgarian who, due to a cruel accident of history, ascends to the Oval Office. But it’s the distinctions that will sting: In the opening moments, a…
Like most of the better Marvel efforts, Thor: Ragnarok feels like the work of a unique sensibility instead of a huddle of brand managers. While the studio’s films demonstrated plenty of comic flair right from the start of its shared-universe experiment, with 2008’s Iron Man, recent efforts have veered too…
Instead of mourning the passing of loved ones, the Mexican holiday Día de Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, celebrates them with huge bashes and colorful festivals. As South Florida gears up for next week’s holiday, New Times has rounded up some of the region’s best happenings. You can even win two round-trip tickets to Mexico. From block parties to workshops and exhibitions, the best Day of the Dead events in South Florida are here at your fingertips.
New Yorkers will immediately recognize the opening shots of One of Us, the new documentary from Jesus Camp filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady: ultra-Orthodox Jewish families roaming the big city, the women and girls in skirts and tights, the men and boys in long black coats and hats, looking…
“This year we hunt big game. This year you get your first kill.” So says seasoned hunter Cal (Matt Bomer) to his teenage son David (Josh Wiggins), who’s arrived in rural Montana for his annual visit, and even those going in unfamiliar with the premise of Alex and Andrew Smith’s…
In the opening shot of Only the Brave, a flaming bear — not just a bear that happens to be burning but one that looks as if it had been created entirely from fire — lunges at the camera in the middle of a blazing forest. The image returns a…
Something of a prank, a farewell, an art project, a buddy comedy, a vox populi tour of the French countryside, and an inquiry into memory and images and what it means to reveal our eyes to the world, Faces Places is a joyous lulu. It finds the great documentarian and…
The scenes that sting and linger in this uncommonly thoughtful and engrossing war drama are not its scenes of combat. They’re of efforts to stave off combat, of politicians and royalty trying to work out a deal to maintain neutrality, of parliaments dissolving and the radio blaring the news to…
