Cinema

Artist Rashid Johnson Makes Feature Debut with ‘Native Son’

April 10th, 2019

Screenshot of Native Son

Following a world premiere as one of the opening night selections of the Sundance Film Festival in January, conceptual visual artist Rashid Johnson’s adaptation of Richard Wright’s venerable “Native Son” debuts April 6 on HBO. The third big screen version of the story of Bigger Thomas, Wright’s film retains many of the book’s central plot points and its ideological critique of institutional racism. The screenplay, by Pulitzer-winner Suzan-Lori Parks, updates sparingly and,…

Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ Tethers Audience to Gut-Check Self-Examination

April 3rd, 2019

With enough mirrors, doublings, and doppelgangers to make Hitchcock, Kubrick and Welles proud, Jordan Peele’s “Us” cements the filmmaker’s reputation as a master craftsman and visual stylist. Creepy, funny, and wicked sharp, the film’s genre is horror, the ideas are expansive and the execution clean. An ominous text prologue alludes to the networks of unused and abandoned tunnels snaking underneath the streets and communities of the United States (shortly, a glimpse of the VHS…

In an Excellent Debut, Writer-Director Nia DaCosta Explores ‘Little Woods’

March 27th, 2019

Screen capture of Little Woods

Set in the fictional Little Woods, North Dakota -- a small town in the western oil patch not too far from the Canadian border -- Nia DaCosta’s first feature film as writer-director marks an auspicious and confident debut. Recalling some of the same issues explored in Courtney Hunt’s memorable “Frozen River,” “Little Woods” also shares its point of view through the harrowing day-to-day of two working-class women pushed to break the law to survive. While “Frozen River”…

Fargo Film Festival 2019: Hidatsa’s ‘trail of tears’ documentary

March 21st, 2019

We Are Still Here photograph during documentary

FARGO – Most people know the Trail of Tears that followed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The U.S. government – under the direction of President Andrew Jackson – forcibly removed tens of thousands of Natives from their ancestral homes.

Thousands were murdered or died along the way west of the Mississippi River.

Less well known is that in 1869 the Xoshga Hidatsa People under the leadership of Crow Flies High and Bobtail Bull, fled persecution and lived along the Missouri River near…

Fargo Film Festival 2019

March 20th, 2019

We Are Still Here

The 19th Fargo Festival begins on Tuesday, March 19th and runs until Saturday, March 23. Continuing a tradition of excellence in local arts programming, the event provides both casual moviegoers and cinephiles with multiple opportunities to see remarkable shorts and features on the two big screens of the Fargo Theatre. Guided by Fargo Theatre Executive Director Emily Beck, organizers work year-round to prepare for the largest annual moving image event in the state of North Dakota.

Fargo Film Festival 2019

Many…

Fargo Proud: Northern Lights Films Debuts Another Feature at Sundance

March 20th, 2019

To the Stars feature photograph

Early 1960s Oklahoma is an ideal setting for classic coming of age themes in Martha Stephens’s “To the Stars.” Richer in characterization and emotion than it is in plotting, “To the Stars” capitalizes on Andrew Reed’s beautiful monochromatic cinematography, with inky blacks and shimmering silvers aspiring to the same kind of nostalgia conjured by the legendary director of photography Robert Surtees in “The Last Picture Show.” Shannon Bradley-Colleary’s screenplay…

‘Small Talk,’ Big Themes

March 20th, 2019

Film still from the movie Small Talk

With the 19th annual Fargo Film Festival underway this week, film lovers and filmmakers are flocking to the Fargo Theatre to catch screenings. One local filmmaker, Steven Warkel, got to see the short film that he wrote and directed, “Small Talk,” come to life on the big screen.

“Small Talk,” which was produced last spring as a student film for MSUM’s film production program, follows a young man through turbulent emotions as he processes the hospitalization and potential death…

Voting for Pedro: ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ Turns Fifteen

March 13th, 2019

Efren Ramirez

Bonafide modern classic “Napoleon Dynamite” celebrates fifteen years of sweet jumps with a victory tour featuring stars Jon Heder and Efren Ramirez. As part of the 2019 Fargo Film Festival, Jade Presents will bring the film to the Fargo Theatre on Thursday, March 21. Heder and Ramirez will participate in an on-stage discussion following the movie.

Ramirez spoke to High Plains Reader film editor Greg Carlson about becoming an accidental icon.

HPR: You were born in Los Angeles and got…

Bathtubs Over Broadway

March 6th, 2019

Almost relegated to the trashcan of history and the file drawer marked for popular cultural ephemera, the audio and/or video recordings of the industrial musical are properly dusted off and polished to a state of splendor in Dava Whisenant’s “Bathtubs Over Broadway.” The first-time feature director, who earned the Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Filmmaker at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival, follows longtime David Letterman staff writer Steve Young on his dogged…

Horns Up for Lane’s ‘Hail Satan?’

February 13th, 2019

Documentarian Penny Lane adds another entertaining movie to her filmography with an inside look at the recent rise of the Satanic Temple. As a movie experience, “Hail Satan?” often lives deliciously. The film might even turn out to be a prime recruitment video for the organization co-founded in 2013 by onscreen imp/spokesperson Lucien Greaves. TST is the perfect subject for the witty and insightful Lane, who detonates truth bomb after truth bomb in a campaign to highlight the…

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