Cinema

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…

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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…

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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,…

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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…

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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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Following “Sign o’ the Times,” his third theatrically-released feature as performer and second as director, Prince’s next cinematic surprise was the soundtrack to Tim Burton’s juggernaut “Batman” in 1989. Unfortunately, the prolific artist did not appear in the film, even though I recall discussing with friends the wildly nerdy notion (rumor?) that Prince would kill it in a violet cowboy hat as Shame should he get a later shot as a “guest villain.”

As funky, lush, and…

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High-definition video options now make it possible for home viewers to experience movies at home with a picture and sound quality comparable to commercial movie theatres, and even to own a theatre-quality copy for the price of one or two movie tickets.

Internet video streaming and intangible cloud-based “digital copies” have become increasingly popular over the past few years among those who love movies, but would rather not build a personal collection of discs (which can take…

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Pitch-black absurdist Yorgos Lanthimos uncorks another of his signature brain-scramblers in “The Lobster,” an allegorical examination and satire of human behavior, framed by the filmmaker’s speculative imagination.

As divisive as any of his previous films, “The Lobster” marks the Greek auteur’s first principally English-language feature, as well as his first to employ several actors well-known to Hollywood, including Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, and John C. Reilly.

“The…

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The third theatrically released feature starring Prince, as well as his second directorial effort, “Sign o’ the Times” remains a concert film par excellence.

The movie’s curious production history has been marked by stories that the vast majority of the visual content was captured at Paisley Park, when footage from shows in Rotterdam and Antwerp didn’t pass muster. Message boards on Prince fansites turn up spirited discussions addressing the movie’s questionable status as a…

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Austrian-born director Fritz Lang is best known for his massive silent science-fiction epic “Metropolis” (1927) and his moody, influential crime thriller “M” (1931), both made in Germany.

He started writing films as early as 1916 and directed over 40 features in various genres between 1919 and 1960. Among Lang’s finest work are his last two silent features, which made their U.S. Blu-ray debuts this February from Kino, filling in the gap between his legendary “Metropolis”…

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