Cinema

Noah Baumbach’s “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)” comforts fans of the filmmaker like a favorite quilt or a pair of old slippers. Sterling production and an all-star cast could attract the uninitiated to the film’s home on Netflix, and longtime appreciators will laugh and wince at many of Baumbach’s favorite observations on family rivalries, aging (un)gracefully, and personal and professional failures.

Centered around a meaty performance by Dustin Hoffman that…

Read more...

Veteran “American Masters” producer and series creator Susan Lacy, whose access to subjects and breadth of knowledge is the envy of scores of documentarians, looks at Steven Spielberg in a nearly two-and-a-half-hour-long portrait for HBO.

Simply titled “Spielberg,” the movie is surprisingly safe, conservative, and risk-free. Populated with an endless supply of close-up talking heads and anchored by the famous filmmaker’s own on-camera commentary -- with many of the anecdotes…

Read more...

In 1948, George Orwell predicted a dystopian future in his pinnacle work ‘1984.’

Orwell died before he could see if the future was plagued by unending war, a totalitarian government and rigorous loyalty rituals as he’d predicted.

While 1984 may not have seen Orwell’s imagination reach fruition, for many, 2017 is the new 1984.

In the first show of their 15th season and in their new space, Moorhead-based theatre company Theatre B is bringing Orwell’s fictional future to the stage…

Read more...

Over the last several weeks, the Concordia Orchestra has been preparing for the challenge

Since Mary Shelley first published her Gothic horror novel in 1818, “Frankenstein” has been read by millions. The classic tale of an overly ambitious scientist who ‘plays God’ by creating new life, and the tragedy that results when he doesn’t take responsibility for his creation, have inspired generations of readers and writers.

Arguably just as influential in the cinematic world is the…

Read more...

As thrilling and thought-provoking a sequel as one might hope, “Blade Runner 2049” leverages potent nostalgia for one of the most influential science-fiction films in the canon.

It’s a tall order to measure up to Ridley Scott’s stunning 1982 accomplishment, and filmmaker Denis Villeneuve -- working for the third time with cinematographer Roger Deakins -- pays homage without succumbing to pure slavishness.

While the new model contains enough echoes, parallels, and callbacks to…

Read more...

This June the Criterion Collection released a restored edition of noted French playwright and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol’s famous Marseilles trilogy to Blu-ray, “Marius” (1931), “Fanny” (1932), and “César” (1936).

A year ago the Shout Factory label released the 1961 American remake “Fanny,” which condenses all three into one film and was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor, and Color Cinematography.

When movie sound technology finally arrived,…

Read more...

The indefatigable Tom Cruise, still able to carry off youthful mock-insouciance at the age of 55, has plenty of fun as Barry Seal in “American Made.”

Seal, an American pilot who smuggled drugs for the Medellin Cartel and informed and testified for the D.E.A., probably wouldn’t have recognized much of his lived experience in Doug Liman’s entertaining fantasy, but the “true story” epigraphs affixed to feature films allow us to assign plausibility to the implausible.

Cruise’s…

Read more...

Artificial Intelligence, robotic workers, unmanned space travel, fatherless children, and Korean conflicts are all recent hot news topics. In September of 1954 all of these were major themes of a low-budget sci-fi thriller targeted at children but with enough plotting and subtext to keep adults interested (perhaps more so today as a cultural artifact than during its original release as popular entertainment).

Earlier this month Kino-Lorber released “Tobor the Great” to Blu-ray. Also…

Read more...

“Strong Island,” Yance Ford’s vital cinematic elegy to his slain brother, is a gripping documentary presented with control and precision. That careful formality serves both the story and the filmmaker’s underlying thematic questions addressing the absurd but commonplace outcomes of the notion of justifiable homicide and the use of reasonable fear as a means for perpetrators to claim self-defense.

In 1992, Ford’s then 24-year-old sibling, William Ford, Jr., was shot to death by…

Read more...

Rom-coms are a staple of modern movies and have been for well over a century. This summer two very different variations on the genre spotlighting iconic 20th-century superstars made their Blu-ray debuts from Kino-Lorber.

One is a classic updating of a popular 19th-century stage play, the other a wacky cartoon-like sequel to a western comedy musical.

“Zaza” (1923) was a vehicle for popular and rising silent legend Gloria Swanson, directed by prolific and versatile Hollywood veteran…

Read more...