Cinema

Personal drama examines life in modern China

July 27th, 2016

“Mountains May Depart” (2015), written and directed by acclaimed Chinese director Jia Zhangke, came out on Blu-ray this month from Kino Video.

It’s Zhangke’s first narrative feature since his Cannes Palme d’Or nominee “A Touch of Sin” (2013), which Kino released to Blu-ray in 2014. Both films are effective critiques of social problems and alienation that are by no means limited to modern China.

In “A Touch of Sin” Zhangke looked at the growth of violence in China in…

Feig’s “Ghostbusters” fires up the proton packs

July 27th, 2016

The insightful Caity Birmingham recently said, “Someday we'll be able to give ‘Ghostbusters’ an honest B- and cite ten movies that did the female scientist action buddy movie so much better.” You gotta admire the optimism in Ms. Birmingham’s note, since the discourse in the months – even years – leading up to Paul Feig’s parallel universe/remake/reboot/reimagining of the hugely popular 1984 comedy phenomenon has focused on an awful lot of ugly and ignorant outbursts…

New Blu-rays a treat for film noir fans

July 22nd, 2016

It’s been a good period for film noir on Blu-ray this year, as the genre (or subgenre or style, depending on who is defining it) seems to be enjoying a renaissance of popularity, with its flawed anti-heroic characters, fashionably dark cynicism, and stylish low-key cinematography. A nice variety of titles both classic and obscure have been getting quality Blu-ray editions from several distributors, including Kino, Olive, Twilight Time, Criterion, Flicker Alley, and even Warner. Here…

What We Had Was Good: Prince and Girl 6

July 20th, 2016

In 1996, six years following the disappointment of “Graffiti Bridge,” Prince agreed to provide the soundtrack music for director Spike Lee’s “Girl 6.” The project would mark the artist’s final full-scale cinematic collaboration, even though filmmakers continued to use his material and seek him out.

Functionally, the “Girl 6” record — credited to Prince even though at the time he was using the unpronounceable symbol to signify his name — constitutes a fantastic collection…

A rare glimpse into the Native American past

July 13th, 2016

After its fortuitous rediscovery about a decade or so ago, followed by a painstaking restoration, the long-lost silent melodrama “The Daughter of Dawn” received a limited theatrical release in 2014 and is finally being made available for Blu-ray home viewing next week. The independently produced 1920 feature had only a few showings when first made and then disappeared for nearly a century.

What is nearly unique about this historic 78-minute film is that it featured a cast made up…

Miller’s simple plan

July 13th, 2016

Based on a story by Karen Rinaldi, Rebecca Miller’s adaptation of “Maggie’s Plan” imagines the intellectual, white, fairytale New York City familiar to Woody Allen fans as the backdrop for a screwball-inspired comedy of amour fou and remarriage.

Featuring Greta Gerwig as the young woman who comes between, and then determines to reunite, academics Julianne Moore and Ethan Hawke, “Maggie’s Plan” covers little that hasn’t already been thoroughly examined by Allen during his…

MSUM’s Summer Cinema returns Monday

July 6th, 2016

There is nothing quite like the experience of seeing silent films on a big screen with a live musical accompaniment and a receptive audience. The 40th Annual Summer Cinema Series at Minnesota State University Moorhead starts Monday, July 11 and will focus entirely on silent comedy this year.

Two evenings will spotlight feature films by Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, and two will be four-film anthologies of classic shorts by Charlie Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy.

All movies will have music…

Dream on, dreamers

June 29th, 2016

Once its cult bona fides were established at the 2002 Butt-Numb-A-Thon (when Eli Roth presented a VHS dub to Harry Knowles as a birthday gift), the adaptation of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” made by kids over the better part of a decade in the 1980s enjoyed a run of successful public screenings – including a stop at the Fargo Film Festival courtesy of Ellen Shafer and Margie Bailly.

While Steven Spielberg and George Lucas graciously looked the other way concerning rights issues,…

“Rez Comedy” aims to break the mainstream barrier

June 22nd, 2016

By Kaley Sievert

“With this film, we hope to show the mainstream that Native American comedians are just as funny as Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., and Gabriel Iglesias,” says Jon Roberts, comedian and member of the Red Lake band of Ojibwe. “If given the opportunity, [Native Americans] can give America a look at something they never knew existed.”

Roberts and Rob Fairbanks, comedian and member of the Leech Lake band of Ojibwe, are two Minnesota competitors in Project Greenlight, a…

Off-beat noir defies 1950s stereotypes

June 22nd, 2016

Sam Fuller’s “House of Bamboo” seems to be pretty much under the radar of many film fans, but is interesting and unusual on several levels, as a social commentary and twisting the film noir “rules” by being shot in color and CinemaScope with stereo sound, as well as for reversing a number of traditional roles expected in the genre. It received a very good Blu-ray release last summer.

Samuel Fuller was an independent-minded, often-perverse maverick filmmaker, noted for some…

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