Eszter Balint, best known as the then-16-year-old star of Jim Jarmusch’s career-making, tide-changing, genre-defining 1984 indie flick STRANGER THAN PARADISE, has a new and quite good album out called Airless Midnight. Her acting career was revived recently when Louis CK cast her as his non-English speaking Hungarian love interest for six episodes of Louie. A few weeks ago Phawker conducted a comprehensive five-hour  interview with her. By her admission, it’s the most in-depth and revealing interview she’s ever done. Very interesting stuff. Her father was an celebrated experimental playwright in Hungary who fled to New York in 1977 when […]

MISTRESS AMERICA (2015, directed by Noah Baumbach, 84 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Director Noah Baumbach is back with his second release of 2015, showcasing the dare-I-say zany charm of his writing and romantic partner Greta Gerwig in their latest joint, Mistress America. This bittersweet comedy comes off as a continuation of their celebrated collaboration from 2012, the effervescent Frances Ha, although in their latest tale Baumbach and Gerwig seem to take her character to task for being the sort a ditsy flake with which today’s New York City will no longer abide. Where Frances Ha showed us […]

  PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: On East Somerset Street, in a clean and roomy paddock next to a tire shop, in the shade of a giant weeping willow, lives a fat and contented pony – the Pony of Port Richmond. His name is Albert, but everyone calls him Coco. Coco does not bite or kick. He is patient and gentle with the neighborhood children and the many passersby who stop to gawk, who abide by the sign on the tire shop’s gate: “Please, do not feed the animal (Horse). Thank You.” He does not flinch even when the cargo trains rumble past, […]

Due out in December, this movie will do for the NFL/concussions what 1999’s The Insider did for Big Tobacco/addiction: Let the genie out of the bottle and throw away the cap. Put on your seat belts, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride. SB NATION: Traumatic brain injury is the skeleton that the NFL has tried to keep in its closet for far too long. Now that’s coming to light on the brightest stage possible. Will Smith’s new movie Concussion will expose people who don’t care about football to the plights of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Smith plays Dr. Bennet […]

  Always take the initiative. There is nothing wrong with spending a night in jail if it means getting the shot you need. Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey. Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief. Learn to live with your mistakes. Expand your knowledge and understanding of music and literature, old and modern. That roll of unexposed celluloid you have in your hand might be the last in existence, so do something impressive with it. There is never an excuse not to finish a film. Carry bolt cutters everywhere. […]

  NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Speaking of genre, what is it about the Western for you? There aren’t many being made right now. QUENTIN TARANTINO: There are a few coming out. Antoine Fuqua is doing Magnificent Seven, starring Denzel Washington, so that’s one. Django did so well I’m surprised that there’s not even more. One thing that’s always been true is that there’s no real film genre that better reflects the values and the problems of a given decade than the Westerns made during that specific decade. The Westerns of the ’50s reflected Eisenhower America better than any other films of […]

BEST OF ENEMIES (2015, dir. by Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville, 87 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC With protesters in the streets and culture wars on the front burner in the U.S., the moment captured in Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville’s new documentary Best of Enemies crackles with modern parallels. It’s the tumultuous summer of 1968 and the country is polarized between two Presidential candidates, the non-charismatic replacement for the slain Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey and the reactionary conservatism of former Red-baiter, Richard Nixon.  Desperate for ratings, the last place network, ABC decides to pair Left-leaning historian and […]

FANTASTIC FOUR (2015, directed by Josh Trank, 100 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Thirty years ago, the now long-gone Orion Pictures released Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Right in the title, we were informed that this mediocre action film was born to be a franchise, based on a popular series of pulp paperbacks about a mercenary called “The Destroyer.” Well, the adventure began and ended there because the movie just wasn’t that good and audiences never showed up. Today, the fact that 20th Century Fox is expecting a franchise out of their third go-around for the Marvel super […]

IRRATIONAL MAN (2015, directed by Woody Allen, 96 minutes, U.S.< ) EXHUMED FILMS @ THE MAHONING DRIVE-IN THEATER BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC A full 45 features into his directing career, Woody Allen returns with a solid entry in his late-career revival. Irrational Man certainly hits on many of the themes and totems we’ve seen explored in previous Allen films (existential ennui, May-September romance, murder plots et al) yet the film has enough fresh elements and performances to warrant turning yourself over to another of the Wood Man’s late-period dramas. Allen has told crime stories before, this is the first […]

ROOM tells the extraordinary story of Jack (Jacob Tremblay in a breakout performance), a spirited 5 year-old who is looked after by his loving and devoted Ma (Brie Larson, SHORT TERM 12, TRAINWRECK). Like any good mother, Ma dedicates herself to keeping Jack happy and safe, nurturing him with warmth and love and doing typical things like playing games and telling stories. Their life, however, is anything but typical—they are trapped—confined to a windowless, 10-by-10-foot space, which Ma has euphemistically named “Room.” Ma has created a whole universe for Jack within Room, and she will stop at nothing to ensure […]

  DAILY BEAST: He was a very sweet guy before midnight,” says Bob Saget, who directed Farley in Dirty Work just before his death. “He was as open, like a 6-year-old, as he was dark. And the darkness was compelling, but not something you’d want to be around.” Like many of the comics in I Am Chris Farley, Saget gets emotional remembering his late friend. “All that love that came out of the guy was just his nature, that was him apologizing for a lot of stuff I wish he never had to apologize for,” he laments. Odenkirk, whose collaborations […]

TANGERINE (2015, directed by Sean S. Baker, 88 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Tangerine is a breezy joyride of a summer movie, like American Graffiti if Dreyfuss and Ron Howard were transgender streetwalkers. Or maybe the B-action film from 1982, Vice Squad, which also featured a prostitute on violent journey through the seedy side of L.A. Both these films share a delirious momentum with Tangerine, as their protagonists cruise through the night intersecting with crazy characters and mayhem. Director Sean S. Baker’s new film taps into all that nighttime energy but its most modern edge is the respect […]