These 87 rocks, one from each of Minnesota’s counties, all carry an excerpt from a letter either to or from a deployed serviceman. The messages are a mix of sentimental and humorous, but all are a reminder of the importance of the family at home to those deployed on active service. The letters from which…
“Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times!” The fight for democracy captured on camera. Do Not Split 不割席 is an excellent short documentary by filmmaker Anders Hammer, who was on the streets in Hong Kong filming the protests in 2019. After premiering at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, the film earned a Best Documentary Short…
What Will Summer Bring is a poetic reflection on displacement, a creation blessed by fortune. Ignacio Ceroi builds a poignant dwelling on the contemporary nomad that beautifully conveys a man’s existential quest. The director sat with Film Inquiry to discuss the film’s exploration of diaspora, privilege and isolation. For our review of What Will Summer Bring, click…
Continuing on from my coverage of documentaries from SXSW 2021, I examined a feature on PC music trailblazer Charli XCX, a biopic of the world’s most renowned domino toppler and the chronicle of American intelligence specialist-turned-whistleblower Reality Winner. Alone Together (Bradley Bell & Pablo Jones-Soler) Alone Together is essentially four movies in one. It’s a…
Incredibly, it took over halfway through the season for Tina Burner’s brand of red, orange, and yellow to become an issue with the judges, and right at the end of her run, too. Tina’s sudden rise, plateau, trip, and then swift fall to the bottom two is one for the ages, comparable only to Jan…
★★★★ Directed by: Chris Hallas Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonWritten by: Chris Hallas Starring: Amanda Gordon, Shona Graham, Rosie Steel, Sam Tutty Read moreRobert Stack Finally Solves a Mystery in ‘The Strange and Deadly Occurrence’FilmReview by: JasonKnight Three young candidates experience a job interview they will never forget. Two girls and…
Pete Docter, the two-time Oscar-winning director of the beloved Pixar features “Up” and “Inside Out,” joined his co-writer/director Kemp Powers (“One Night in Miami”) and producer Dana Murray (“Brave”) in chatting with me via Zoom about their Oscar-nominated animated film, “Soul,” which just won the Producers Guild Award for Best Animated Film. The conversation was held as…
Ziaulhaq Ahmadi sits on the floor of his small, one-story house, a brown, mud-walled compound at the end of a dusty alley in Aqa Saray. Surrounded by vineyards, fruit trees, and snow-capped mountains, the village is a half hour’s drive north of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital. With great gentleness, he taps on what looks like a…
Six Minutes to Midnight is quite a personal endeavor for Eddie Izzard: not only does she star in the film, but she also serves as executive producer and co-wrote the script, based on events that took place in her hometown of Bexhill-on-Sea during the 1930s. At that time, the Augusta Victoria School, an Anglo-German finishing…
Caesarea was one of the most important cities of the ancient Roman world and the capital of the province of Judaea. The ruins of Caesarea, sometimes referred to as Caesarea Maritima to distinguish it from Caesarea Philippi, lie on the Mediterranean coast of present-day Israel. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonThe city was…
In my undistinguished career as a filmmaker–consisting of a few Super-8 reels in my green days and a zero-budget sci-fi feature in my brown—I’ve had a lot of time between projects to read up on movies. Film continues to be a source of endless fascination for the public. Celebrity is the shiniest bauble on the…
Born as Harry Mills in 1840, Brusher Mills earned his nickname due to the fact that he was a frequent sight at local cricket matches where he would sweep, or brush, the pitch between innings. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonHowever, it was another community-spirited occupation that earned Brusher the status of…
In the small village of Águas de Moura, in Portugal’s Alentejo region, stands the world’s largest Cork oak tree (Quercus suber). Well over 230-years-old, the tree was planted in 1783, the same year that the Treaty of Paris was signed ending the American Revolutionary War. Sobreiro Monumental is also affectionately known as “The Whistler Tree…
Throwing off the group dynamic could be deadly in Stowaway, the latest from co-writer/director Joe Penna. Michael didn’t actually want to go to space. He worked on the ship as an engineer, but his life on the ground came with far too many commitments to disappear for years at a time. Unfortunately, that’s exactly where he…
Along the shores of the Red River in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is a tower of curving glass, steel, and alabaster, a bright place even in the dead of winter. In a gallery on the first floor, conservator Stephanie Chipilski checks equipment that monitors the room’s temperature and humidity. She slips…
It was 15 years ago when they first started talking about dirty words. Tamanna Mishra and Neha Thakur often discussed how uneasy popular Indian expletives made them. Mishra, a communications consultant in Bengaluru, and Thakur, an Airbnb host in Mumbai, noticed increasingly casual use of these profanities in mainstream entertainment. The problem wasn’t the swearing…
This bear pit is the finest surviving example in the United Kingdom, and its superb condition of the structure is thanks to the many years it was used as Yorkshire’s biggest compost pit. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonThis is a Grade II listed structure and was built in 1836 to home…
Welcome to Filmographies, a column for completists. Every edition brings a working actor’s resumé into focus as we learn about what makes them so compelling. In this entry, we spotlight the filmography of Zendaya. Zendaya is an entertainer in every sense of the word. The erstwhile Disney Channel mainstay has cultivated one of the most sensational…
Beyond the Classics is a bi-weekly column in which Emily Kubincanek highlights lesser-known old movies and examines what makes them memorable. In this installment, she highlights the historical value of Lois Weber’s Where Are My Children? Few filmmakers knew how to make silent films about women as well as Lois Weber. Social topics barred from most feature…
“Now matter how far you run, you can never escape yourself…” Whoa, this trailer! Signature has released an official trailer for an epic new colonial historic thriller titled Edge of the World, a jungle crusade movie from filmmaker Michael Haussman. The film takes us on the true “adventures” of Sir James Brooke, who defied the…
This year’s winner of the Generation 14plus Grand Prix, the top prize at the youth category at the Berlinale, The Fam (La Mif) is equally haunting and fascinating. The insight into a care home for young girls discusses delicate subjects such as incest and sexual abuse with a verité approach that feels all too real,…