Cinema

Blonde ambition: Hargitay looks for ‘My Mom Jayne’

July 29th, 2025

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Cinephiles and fans of classic midcentury Hollywood biography will find much to appreciate in Mariska Hargitay’s insightful documentary “My Mom Jayne.” As protagonist Olivia Benson on NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” Hargitay holds the record for playing the longest-running primetime character on network television. Many also know her as the daughter of iconic sex symbol Jayne Mansfield. Hargitay’s feature directorial debut…

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​‘Eddington’ Enters Quarantine

July 21st, 2025

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Ari Aster’s political satire “Eddington” premiered in competition for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May, where Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident” received the prize. A frequently laborious mash-up of genres including flashes of the filmmaker’s horror comfort zone (“Hereditary” and “Midsommar” remain the best films he has made) and slow-burn American Western/noir touches that aspire to the blending of violence and comedy…

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​Wing Theatre: Keeping the big screen in a small town

July 15th, 2025

By Sabrina Hornung

sabrina@hpr1.com

Photo by Sabrina Hornung

Wing, North Dakota is a town of 132 located about an hour northwest of Bismarck on Highway 36. There’s a shiny new Cenex on the intersection of the highway and the high school marks the end of Main with six smiling senior portraits affixed to the building. It’s a quiet community with a few small businesses in town, including the staples such as a bar and a cafe.

One that particularly caught my eye was the movie theatre,…

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J​esko considers broadcast legend in documentary ‘Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything’

July 15th, 2025

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

With “Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything,” director Jackie Jesko takes on the legacy and legend of the late journalist extraordinaire. One of the year’s many solid, feature-length biographical documentaries, Jesko’s movie premiered at the Tribeca Festival in June before making its way to Hulu. The director highlights career accomplishments and off-camera alliances, avoiding total hagiography by looking at a handful of the transactional…

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​Secret words: Wolf considers ‘Pee-wee as Himself’

July 7th, 2025

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Filmmaker Matt Wolf, whose lovely “Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell” suggests he would be the perfect director to construct the definitive biographical account of the wholly original Paul Reubens, mostly makes good on that promise with the two-part “Pee-wee as Himself.” The story, now on HBO following a Sundance world premiere, has been identified somewhat disappointingly as a kind of “coming out” revelation, even though…

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‘Sally’ tells the public and private story of American space pioneer

July 1st, 2025

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

As we continue to deal with the ongoing horrorshow of racism, misogyny and transphobia embraced by the current administration, films like “Sally” can serve as an important reminder that love triumphs over hate time and again. News broke just this month that the Pentagon had officially renamed the John Lewis-class oiler USNS Harvey Milk for World War II officer Oscar V. Peterson. National Public Radio reported that “Under [Secretary of Defense…

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​Thompson Honors Legend Stone in ‘Sly Lives!’

June 24th, 2025

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

The June 9 death of musician Sylvester Stewart, known much better by stage name Sly Stone, saw an outpouring of tributes, memorials and appreciations from some who knew him personally and many who never made his acquaintance. The groundbreaking visionary and multi-instrumentalist launched hit after hit into the cosmos, defining and redefining genre boundaries with a core group of players that included Black and white, male and female, years before…

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​Darkest Day of Horror Film Festival arrives in Fargo

June 17th, 2025

By JD Provorse

jdprovorse@gmail.com

Horror movie fans of the valley, our time has come! Darkest Day of Horror Film Festival comes to the Fargo Theatre on Saturday, June 21. I sat down with JD Provorse, the creator and curator of DDHF (who also happens to be me), to talk about what horror fans can expect.

Hi, JD. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us today.

The pleasure is all mine, JD.

So, what is Darkest Day of Horror Film Festival, and how did it come about?

DDHFF is a one-day…

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​Song makes matches in the world of ‘Materialists’

June 17th, 2025

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Celine Song’s thrilling debut “Past Lives” was nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscars. It was one of the most memorable and rewarding films of 2023. The writer-director’s sophomore effort, “Materialists,” is another triangle-based romance. “Materialists” centers on a successful NYC matchmaker played by Dakota Johnson. Johnson’s Lucy Mason, whose occupation requires a curious blend of deception and candor,…

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​Holiness and hand grenades: Anderson plans ‘The Phoenician Scheme’

June 9th, 2025

By Greg Carlson

gregcarlson1@gmail.com

Wes Anderson’s twelfth full-length feature, “The Phoenician Scheme,” sees the idiosyncratic auteur pull back from the elaborate storytelling scaffolding and structures of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Asteroid City,” movies that dazzled viewers with metanarrative gymnastics nesting stories inside stories. Even so, “The Phoenician Scheme” bears enough of the familiar stylistic rigor identified with Anderson to be instantly…

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