From the moment she heard that computer ask, "How about a nice game of chess?" Stacia has been devoted to movies. A film critic and writer for the better part of a decade, Stacia also plays classical guitar, reads murder mysteries and shamelessly abuses both caffeine and her Netflix queue.
The ragged, fly-by-night documentary Muddy Track (1987) follows Neil Young and Crazy Horse through their turbulent 1987 European tour. Young directed the film under his pseudonym Bernard Shakey, and shot much of it himself as well, using a videocamera he named “Otto” early in the tour. Though Muddy Track never received a proper release, the film has been available through fan trading …
In the jungles of South America, families are being chased off their land by dangerous henchmen working for large companies. João (Chico Diaz), a farmer living with his beautiful daughter Vania (Alice Braga), has been fighting off these corporate vultures for some time, but fears he can’t fight them forever. Just as a group of three gunmen begin to …
Ed Avery (James Mason) is a schoolteacher with secrets. For months, he’s been moonlighting as a taxi dispatcher to make ends meet, but he’s also been suffering from mysterious pains that he goes to great lengths to hide, especially from his wife Lou (Barbara Rush). Just as she’s starting to get suspicious, Ed collapses at home, and a trip to the hospital confirms he’s afflicted with a serious arterial disease. There is only one treatment: cortisone, which reduces …
On the surface, the Parkers seem like an unremarkable family, spending their days at work and school, trying to stay cool in the stifling heat of an Australian summer. Just under that calm surface, however, is a family in crisis, in no small part thanks to the boredom brought on by their recent move to the tiny town of Nathgari. Matthew Parker (Joseph Fiennes) insists that his family’s move was necessary, and while his wife Catherine (Nicole Kidman) tries to make the …
One of the first and best pirate films ever made, The Black Pirate (1926) is both rip-roaring action adventure and technical marvel. Starring silent movie superstar Douglas Fairbanks at the height of his popularity, The Black Pirate was the perfect vehicle for the athletic actor as well as a chance to delve into the relatively new medium of color film. The result was tremendous, garnering Fairbanks not only …
Gabriel (Rory Culkin) takes a detour on his way home for winter break, stopping at another university, hoping to find his former girlfriend Alice (Emily Meade). Intense and a little off-putting, he still manages to get help from a wary student, and then talk his way into Alice’s apartment house, claiming that he is her cousin. When he finally gets on a bus to go home, his older brother Matthew (David Call) is at the station to meet him, livid at Gabriel’s lateness and …
In the wake of yet another mass shooting, we’re reminded once again that in America, far too many people believe that a gun is the solution to their problems. Worse, they often believe that someone else’s religion, race, gender, or sexuality is their problem, or they can be set off by something as innocuous as an unfriending on Facebook. Having already decided that violence is the only proper response to any and all problems, tragedy is the inevitable result.
Rope (1948), Alfred Hitchcock’s first color film, is a lurid tale of two friends, Brandon (John Dall) and Philip (Farley Granger), who decide to murder their friend and former classmate David (Dick Hogan), whom they have deemed an inferior human being. They strangle him and shove his body into a large chest they plan to use as a buffet table for a dinner party later that night. As guests arrive, Brandon, cool and collected, relishes the pitch-black humor he finds in …
It’s 1856 and Samuel Woodward (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) and his family, all escaped slaves, are travelling the Underground Railroad, on their way to Canada and freedom. Samuel is distrusting and embittered from his life as a slave, so as they travel, his grandmother tells him the story of John Newton (Bernhard Forcher), a white slave ship captain who brought their ancestor to the United States a century prior. Newton would go on to write “Amazing Grace,” and his story of faith …
Varlam Aravidze (Avtandil Makharadze), the former mayor of a small town in Soviet Georgia, has died. His passing is met with tears and solemn songs in praise of the dead. The day after his burial, however, Varlam returns, still dead, but propped up in the garden of his son Abel (also played by Makharadze). After causing a bit of a stir, Varlam’s dusty, stiff body is reburied that evening, but reappears the next …