MARK HARRIS: What is striking about Being There, the portrait of a man who relates to no one but to whom everyone relates, is that it represents both a synthesis of many of the qualities in Ashby’s earlier movies and a sharp break from them. The film is initially quiet; its mood is hushed, almost austere. We meet Chance, a simpleminded, middle-aged man-child who has spent his entire life in the Washington, D.C., home of a wealthy, unseen benefactor, as he goes about what is clearly an unvarying ritual. He wakes up, gets out of bed, combs his hair, […]

NEW YORK TIMES: Bouncing his young daughter on his knee, or at work in his studio, Mr. Lynch is less cryptic in this film directed by Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes and Olivia Neergaard-Holm than in the 2007 documentary “Lynch.” Mr. Lynch charts the shift from an idyllic early childhood in Idaho to a darker period after a family move to Virginia. He repeatedly credits the encouragement of the artist Bushnell Keeler and he calls Philadelphia, where he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, a city that would “suck your happiness away and fill you with sadness and fear.” […]

Directed by Luc Besson, based on the French sci-fi graphic novel, Valerian & Laureline. In theaters July 21st.

T2 Trainspotting (2017, directed by Danny Boyle, 117 minutes, U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Trainspotting was a fun lark in 1996, so why not bring the boys back together 20 years later to catch up?  Drawing partially from Irvine Welsh’s literary sequel, Porno, director Danny Boyle takes the dare and ties off for another hit of drugs, banter, and hi-jinks.  Reuniting the 40-something Scots (Rent Boy, Sick Boy, Begbie, and Spud) the film wants to be a knowing look at middle-age but seems to be just as confused as its characters on the question of why is exists. Spud […]

  Logan (2017, directed by James Mangold, 137 minutes, USA) BY RICHARD SUPLEE It has been 17 years since the first X-Men movie introduced the world to Hugh Jackman’s razor-clawed Wolverine. Saying that Jackman’s solo Wolverine films “are a mixed bag” is probably too generous of a compliment. The first spin-off, 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, is a film only talked about in conversations about “the worst comic book movie ever.” The film is so toxic that it made Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool nearly impossible to make. It was just a bunch of fight scenes, random forgettable mutants, and CGI powers jumbled […]

  KEDI (2017, directed by Ceda Toron, 80 minutes, Turkey) BY JOANN LOVIGLIO CAT FILM CRITIC Kedi is the cat movie we need now: A master class in empathy, a reaffirmation of the human capacity for kindness, and CATS. Lots of cats — some we come to know by name, others we briefly meet in passing, all of them scruffily, scrappily adorable. Director/producer Ceyda Torun spent her childhood in Istanbul. Like many of the people we meet in Kedi, she says the city’s street cats made her life less lonely and shaped her into the person she is. It’s clear […]

I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO (2016, directed by Raoul Peck, 95 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC It looks like President Trump is going to follow the recent tradition and forgo a State of the Union speech as his first term begins, but with an eerie ambiance of resurrection, Raoul Peck has brought to life the fiery spirit of the late writer/intellectual James Baldwin to deliver the address. Hearing that Baldwin is at the center of the documentary, I Am Not Your Negro might lead you to expect your basic talking heads interviews about the man life and work. […]

  THE NEW YORKER: His interest is in people and their trajectories; a maximalist, he wants to reveal the entirety of his characters’ lives and minds. In “20th Century Women,” the five main characters periodically narrate their own and one another’s biographies. Their stories are accompanied by montages of period photos intended to create an air of credence. A believer in sympathetic magic, Mills gathers dog-eared objects and forgotten rituals to summon a world of mixtapes and Judy Blume and Three Mile Island and skateboarders who grab their boards behind their front leg. Julie (Elle Fanning), a seventeen-year-old who cuddles […]

  SIGN O’ THE TIMES (1987, directed by Prince, 89 minutes, U.S.) BREAKING GLASS (1980, directed by Brian Gibson, 103 minutes, U.K.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Andrew’s Video Vault presents a pair of semi-lost 80s rock films are on the bill Thursday night January 12th at the Rotunda in West Philly: Prince’s 1987 theatrical concert film Sign O’ the Times and Brian Gibson’s 1980 rise and fall of a British post-punk star Breaking Glass with Hazel O’Connor, in its extended U.K. Cut. It’s easy to see 1987’s double-album Sign O’ the Times as Prince’s cultural pinnacle, propelling three songs […]

  BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Another year ticks by and 2016 reinforces the idea that the creation of serious, non-blockbuster films is less and less of interest in the American movie industry. No less a voice of authority than Martin Scorsese professed this opinion in a recent Associated Press article proclaiming “Cinema is Gone,” and while film culture is still consistently flourishing in pockets around the world, only four of the dozen films listed here as 2016 favorites are by U.S. directors, surely an all-time personal low. People carry with them a lot of myths about creativity being a […]

  NEW YORK TIMES: Ms. Fisher established Princess Leia as a damsel who could very much deal with her own distress, whether facing down the villainy of the dreaded Darth Vader or the romantic interests of the roguish smuggler Han Solo. Wielding blaster pistols, piloting futuristic vehicles and, to her occasional chagrin, wearing strange hairdos and a revealing metal bikini, she reprised the role in three more films — “The Empire Strikes Back” in 1980, “Return of the Jedi” in 1983 and, 32 years later, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” by which time Leia had become a hard-bitten general. Lucasfilm […]

  LA LA LAND (2016, directed by Damien Chazelle, 128 minutes, U.S.) JACKIE (2016, directed by Pablo Larain, 99 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Trepidation preceded me sitting down for director Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to the award-winning hit Whiplash, a film that admittedly irked me in a most personal way. For those lucky enough to have missed it, Whiplash was a musical drama proposing that the best way to craft a new generation of jazz geniuses was to abuse them like a crazed drill sergeant in a house-of-horrors-come-classroom where never is heard an encouraging word. Driven by a […]