TRUE STORY (2015, directed by Rupert Goold, 100 minutes, USA) BY COLE NOWLIN True story: Jonah Hill and James Franco co-star in a movie without a single dick-joke, bro-hug, or bong rip. Instead of phallic digressions, there is tense dialogue and a relentless search for truth. If you are looking for laughs, sit this one out, otherwise you will be hard pressed to find a truly comedic moment. Instead, True Story grapples with big ideas about identity, authenticity, and situational ethics. Jonah Hill plays Michael Finkel, a promising journalist for the New York Times who goes from Pulitzer hopeful to […]

WHILE WE’RE YOUNG (2014, directed by Noah Baumbach, 97 minutes, U.S.) THE SALT OF THE EARTH (2014, directed by Wim Wender & Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, 110 minutes, Germany) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I’ve “liked” or “loved” all of Noah Baumbach’s directorial work up to now which makes his latest While We’re Young feel like a sad departure, the point where a filmmaker gives in to convention at the same spots where previous works like The Squid & the Whale and Margot at the Wedding once defied it. Baumbach has created quite a catalog of disgruntled square pegs across six […]

  TORTURE DUNGEON (1969, directed by Andy Milligan, 77 minutes U.S.) BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS (1970, directed by Andy Milligan, 79 minutes, U.S./U.K.) THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS (1972, directed by Andy Milligan, 80 minutes U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC One of the must perverse cinematic cults of film history gets a full bow this Friday at the International House when Exhumed Films presents a triple feature of the films of Staten Island auteur, Andy Milligan. Made on the stringiest of shoestring budgets, Milligan’s shrill little misanthropic films were produced to play to grindhouse audiences of the 1960s and 70s. The […]

  Yesterday, Vice released a short film entitled Mr. Happy, directed by Collin Tilley and starring Chance The Rapper. Chance plays Victor, a depressed loner who comes across a website called MrHappy.com which provides an unusual service: you can hire a hitman to kill you. I’m a big fan of Chance since he became nationally known through his hit mixtape Acid Rap last summer, so naturally I was excited to see the film. Chance’s lyrics capture a type of angst, or insecurity that is so hard to encapsulate, so, after reading a quick blurb, it was clear this role was […]

  BY COLE NOWLIN Reaction to American Sniper — the new Clint Eastwood film starring Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle, the deadliest marksman in American military history, with 160 confirmed kills in Iraq — has run the gamut of love and hate. Some have likened it to Quentin Tarantino’s version of Nazi propaganda, others have called it one of the “great pieces of American poetry.” People who have seen the film seem most divided by three key aspects of American Sniper: Whether Kyle was a war hero or a remorseless killing machine The historical accuracy of American Sniper’s portrayal of […]

Artwork by JUAN OSBORNE ROLLING STONE: We get the unfiltered Kurt experience, all disturbing sketches, poems in progress and aspirational lists. We also get a disjointed, disorienting look at fame through his eyes, seen as a jumble of shows, news reports and vapid TV interrogations that all bleed together. And we get an uncomfortably intimate look at his life with Courtney, including self-shot close-ups of the couple making out, bitching about their treatment in the press and a pregnant Love showing off her breasts. This is a couple drunk on love, and per the glossy-to-tabloid reports that Morgen sprinkles in, […]

SELMA (2014, Directed by Ava DuVernay, 128 Minutes, U.S.) BY ZACHARY SHEVICH FILM CRITIC Selma opens with Martin Luther King Jr. practicing his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in the mirror, anxiously second-guessing his choice of tie. It’s a rare departure to portray the revered leader of the civil rights movement as a complex, all-too-human being no more immune than the rest of us to life’s trivialities, rather than a messianic figure delivering his people from bondage — although, in fact, he was/is both. Director Ava Duvernay (I Will Follow, Middle of Nowhere) projects a nuanced perspective of the events […]

VICE: On Tuesday, Pahlaj Nihalani was appointed India’s Censor Board chief after his predecessor, Leela Samson resigned, citing “interference, coercion, and corruption.” The cause: The Film Certification Appellate Tribunal had overruled her decision to keep the movie MSG: The Messenger of God, out of theaters. MSG: The Messenger of God is a terrible name for a movie that isn’t about Moses delivering cheap Chinese food (producers, call me), but the actual issue is that the goofball protagonist of the film is a thinly veiled stand-in for the actor playing him. That actor is the so-called “Guru in Bling,” or Gurmeet […]

  The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014, directed by Wes Anderson, 99 minutes, USA) BY JONATHAN VALANIA  Wes Anderson is the two-word answer to the increasingly asked question: What good is a liberal arts education? Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, Moonrise Kingdom, that’s what.There have been times in this country’s history when we’ve had to take stock, look into our hearts and ask ourselves: Do we really want to live in a world without English majors? And this is one of those times. Which only makes The Grand Budapest Hotel, director Wes Anderson’s eighth full-length feature, all the more […]

  BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC If the state of the world tends to shade your personal mood, it is pretty easy to consider 2014 a year of epic trauma and bad vibes. I was thinking it was an off year for film too but when I went over my notes it turns out there was a lot to be enthusiastic about, although we again seem to be thirsting for truly original American cinema this year. Here’s a baker’s dozen films that took me to new places, many of them seeming like they could be made in no other time […]