Cinema

WARNING: The following review reveals plot information. Read only if you have seen “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2”

In the sequel, the franchise, and the series, the dialectical tension pitting familiarity against novelty challenges the storyteller to thread the eye of the needle. “Is it is good as the first one?” is, unsurprisingly, the question that drives conversation.

In “The Myth of Superman,” Umberto Eco recognizes a parallel conundrum for the mythological figure: the…

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Westerns are no longer as prominent among movie release schedules as they used to be, but for over half a century they ranked among the most popular genres in America’s theatres, with various western subgenres. The form gradually faded away during the 1960s and 1970s as “revisionist” westerns replaced the classic formulas that were soon appropriated by modern police stories and then science-fiction sagas.

For the past generation, movie westerns (with a few exceptions) have tended…

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Available to view on Netflix beginning April 28, Kitty Green’s challenging, fascinating, and unnerving documentary feature “Casting JonBenet” is one of the best films of the year.

Ostensibly about the ongoing fascination and morbid curiosity surrounding the 1996 murder case referenced in the film’s title, Green’s conceit is to populate her study with actors -- almost entirely locals and wannabes from the areas surrounding the Ramsey family’s Boulder, Colorado home --…

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Now on Netflix instant watch and not to be missed is director Keith Maitland’s “Tower,” one of the most memorable and gripping films of 2016.

Carefully, even meticulously, constructing a moment-by-moment chronological account of the 1966 University of Texas at Austin murders committed by Charles Whitman from the observation deck of the Main Building, Maitland’s film relies on the use of interpretive performance and rotoscope animation -- two fairly unorthodox stylistic choices…

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Besides income tax, April saw the beginning of baseball season, a game that has been considered America’s “national pastime” for over 160 years.

The ritual became immortalized in 1888 with the publication of Ernest Thayer’s famous comic poem “Casey at the Bat,” which immediately became a popular text for public recitations, the most famous of which was by stage star DeWolf Hopper, then 30 years old, who delighted audiences with his melodramatic interpretation for the next 47…

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[Editor’s note: Wednesday marks the 20th anniversary of the evacuation of Grand Forks and the burning of the original High Plains Reader office. This piece was originally written Tuesday April 22, 1997.]

"Get up! There's water coming in the basement and we're being evacuated!"

It is about 6:30 Saturday morning. After four hours work at the Midco 10 Theatre Friday, getting the films and projectors ready for the weekend's shows, I had spent the rest of the afternoon helping my parents…

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Even though I didn’t discover the place until a little over a month before it closed last September, The New Direction left an indelible impact on me. The sense of community, do-it-yourself attitude, and love of local and independent music struck a chord in me in that short span of time, so I can only imagine the impact it had on those who had been regularly attending performances there for years.

The sheer energy of the place left an impact on someone else whose experience was about…

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The seemingly ill-advised sequel to Danny Boyle’s 1996 pop culture tidal wave “Trainspotting” arrives with a definitely ill-advised title in “T2 Trainspotting.” Shouldn’t it be “T2: Trainspotting” or just “Trainspotting 2” or even “Porno,” after Irvine Welsh’s literary follow-up?

If the T stands for “Trainspotting,” the movie is “Trainspotting 2 Trainspotting,” which I suppose could function as a kind of grammatical bridging of the old to the new, but…

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Sometimes one is not in the mood for a heavy drama, elaborate action-adventure, or even a light comedy. Sometimes it feels good to watch a simple formula genre picture unashamed of its low budget, be it a western, film noir crime story, murder-mystery, or horror-thriller. The latter two genres often blend together, as in two B-grade thrillers released in 1940-41 by the low-budget Monogram studio, both of which came out on Blu-ray from Kino a few weeks ago.

“Chamber of Horrors” (1940)…

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Todd Haynes’ Oscar-nominated period romantic melodrama “Far from Heaven” (2002) will have its 15th anniversary this fall. The film has a socially-conscious edge that earned it widespread acclaim, yet it is still not available on Blu-ray in the United States (there are Blu-rays from Canada, France, and Spain, however). Those who appreciated his story of a 1950s New England housewife’s awakening to the hypocrisy, racism, and homophobia of her apparently perfect little world may…

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