Manos Sucias Directed by Josef Wladyka Colombia, 2014 It’s not hard to see why the great Spike Lee would want to get his hands on the drug-trafficking dramatic thriller Manos Sucias. It’s exceptionally made and extraordinarily tense. It also profiles a culture that’s both rarely depicted in art and quite underserved in real life. Lee …
Next Goal Wins Directed by Mike Brett and Steve Jamison United Kingdom, 2014 For sports fans, there’s nothing more hopeless than cheering for a perennial loser. Die-hard supporters of the Detroit Lions, Cleveland Browns, and Kansas City Royals, among other notoriously bad franchises, know the agony of defeat all too well. But they’ve got nothing …
All About Ann: Governor Richards of the Lone Star State Directed by Keith Patterson and Phillip Schopper USA, 2014 The unapologetically liberal All About Ann: Governor Richards of the Lone Star State profiles a species that’s harder to find in the real world today than fairies, unicorns, and vampires combined—the truly powerful Democratic politician in …
When the Garden Was Eden Directed by Michael Rapaport USA, 2014 It was Game 5 of the 1970 NBA finals. A tight series between the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks might have turned when Knicks star Willis Reed went down with a leg injury. Reed—the captain of the team, the league MVP, and …
March is about to get mad. Beginning tonight, sports fans (and a lot of non-sports fans) will spend most waking hours pouring over brackets and RPIs, trying to figure out who will be the next Davidson or Lehigh, and watching more TruTV over 3 weeks than they will rest of the year combined. ESPN is …
Good things might happen to those who wait, but the Disney/Pixar masterpiece Ratatouille tells us great things only happen to those who act fearlessly. “Anyone can cook,” is the quote most viewers leave the film with, and director Brad Bird lets the themes represented by this philosophy—nothing is impossible, anyone and everyone is capable of …
When John Milius first put pen to paper on a screenplay that set Joseph Conrad’s seminal novel Heart of Darkness in the jungles of Vietnam, he had no idea he’d be embarking on a decade-long trip through creative hell. When George Lucas dropped out of directing Apocalpyse Now in favor of making Star Wars, he …
When Sight and Sound magazine updated its lists of the greatest films of all time in 2012, lost in a sea of “Vertigo or Citizen Kane?” think pieces was arguably a bigger bit of news. Yes, among the ranks of Ozu, Kubrick, Ford, Fellini, and the rest of the top 10 was a Russian avant garde filmmaker, …