Even in a year when it seems like we’ve lost celebrities like never before, the passing of Sean Connery feels like a different matter altogether. He was one of those towering figures that felt indestructible, and he was a constant presence for decades. Had he never played the role of James Bond, Connery may or…
“With her power there’s no telling what he can do.” Lionsgate has finally launched the first full trailer for Chaos Walking, the long-delayed, epic new sci-fi action movie from Doug Liman, that has also undergone reshoots after originally being set to open in 2019. Based on a book, the sci-fi film is set in a…
Tucked away among the dusty rafters beneath the castle spire is a wooden doll that has a hold on Egeskov Castle and its occupants. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonNo one knows to whom the doll belonged, or how it came to be left in the dark attic of the imposing 16th-century…
A family struggles to make it in America in Minari, the latest from writer/director Lee Isaac Chung. You’ve probably been hearing about this one for a while. The drama about a Korean family moving to Arkansas to start a farm was the big hit out of Sundance, taking both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury…
★★★ Directed by #DanFriedkin Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonWritten by #JohnOrloff #MarkFergus #HawkOstby Starring #GuyPearce #ClaesBang #VickyKrieps Read moreRobert Stack Finally Solves a Mystery in ‘The Strange and Deadly Occurrence’,,Film Review by ,,Hope Madden Who doesn’t like a story about swindling Nazis? There’s something festive in that notion, and Dan Friedkin’s…
Tony Glover, in the estimation of at least one esteemed critic, was one of the best harmonica players in all Minneapolis, where an impressive folk music scene had emerged by the 1960s. “I couldn’t play like Glover or anything and I didn’t try to. I played mostly like Woody Guthrie and that was about it,”…
Carga, a Spanish thriller set in Iraq, follows couple Marta and Juan (Tania Watson and Agustín Mateo) to an abandoned cigarette factory to uncover its secrets. It’s a simple yet ominous setup, and setting. With the couple venturing into the great unknown, director and co-writer, Yad Deen, does a marvellous job of building tension in…
Welcome to Commentary Commentary, where we sit and listen to filmmakers talk about their work, then share the most interesting parts. In this edition, Rob Hunter listens to Paul Schrader discuss his directorial debut, Blue Collar. Paul Schrader‘s been a part of the American movie scene since writing 1974’s The Yakuza, and he’s remained a compelling…
“Tell me where your grandmother came from and I can tell you how many kinds of pie you serve for Thanksgiving,” the food writer Clementine Paddleford surmised in her 1960 book, How America Eats. Around Boston, she wrote, “four kinds of pie were traditional for this feast occasion—mince, cranberry, pumpkin, and a kind called Marlborough,…
Jackie Chan and Liam Neeson have something in common. Both stars vowed to give up the action heroics as they entered their 60s. Neither one has stuck to the plan. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonChan’s latest, “Vanguard,” finds the action superstar taking baby steps toward his promise. He’s surrounded himself with…
The Lemp family is probably one of the most prestigious American families you’ve never heard of. The hard-working German immigrants made their fortune as beer brewers in 19th-century St. Louis alongside, and in competition with, the Anheuser-Busch family of Budweiser fame. However, despite their success, the Lemp family could not escape tragedy, as many died by…
Exile, filmmaker Visar Morina‘s sophomore effort, is what I’d call a truly deceiving film. Bear in mind that there aren’t mind-boggling twists here. For that matter, considering the minuscule drama or action in it, I wonder what the script of the film might have looked like. There were multiple instances when I felt chopping off…
The old stone bridge that spanned the River Oich was destroyed by flooding in 1849. To prevent a similar incident, a single-span bridge was commissioned for construction. Engineer James Dredge, along with his patented “taper principle,” was enlisted to design the new bridge. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonIn 1854, the bridge was…
Burial mounds usually dating to the 3rd to 7th-centuries can be found across Japan. While several types exist, the most curious formation is known to archaeologists as yokoana-bo, or “sidelong hole-style tomb.” The Hundred Caves of Yoshimi is a notable example of this configuration. There is another “Hundred Caves” in Utsunomiya City, but it’s not as…
In the Mbala district in Zambia, the Kalambo River forms the northern border of the country with Tanzania. Along the river is Kalambo Falls, a 725 foot (221 meters) high single-drop waterfall, making it the second-highest in Africa. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonBesides the stunning views, Kalambo Falls is an important…
“War sucks,” says one of the many white people prominently featured in “No Man’s Land.” One of his companions protests. He’s supposed to be an author, can’t he provide more insight than that? Our budding Hemingway’s rejoinder is perhaps more revealing than the creators of Hulu’s hollow, humorless new series might have intended: “It’s catchy….
A regular person must save humanity in Superintelligence, the latest from director Ben Falcone. It’s not unreasonable to question whether humanity deserves to exist right now, which perhaps makes the premise of this movie a bit more disconcerting than intended. In it, a super-powerful A.I. asks this very question, and it decides to put humans…
Just past the ambitious, yet incongruous buildings along via Petroselli, sits an unusual house known as Casa dei Crescenzi. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonThe house is remarkable in that it is a well-preserved example of a medieval home, one originally owned by Niccolò de Crescenzi, son of Crescenzio and Theodora. The…
This piece was originally published in Undark and appears here as part of our Climate Desk collaboration. Iris Gao keeps a ginseng root in her office. It’s fixed on black velvet with three other bleached-brown specimens, all of them twisty and otherworldly and protected by glass in a shadowbox frame. This particular root, says Gao,…
★★★ Directed by #DavidRaboy Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonWritten by #DavidRaboy Starring #OdessaYoung #MadelynCline Read moreRobert Stack Finally Solves a Mystery in ‘The Strange and Deadly Occurrence’,,Film Review by ,,Hope Madden Been a while since I’ve been swimming in the dark. Who knows what nasty things are in there? It may…
Michael Twitty was leading a conversation on African diasporic food when the woman he was speaking to broke into tears. Twitty, a food writer, historian, and historical interpreter, had just explained that the word for “eat” in Wolof, a West African language, is nyam. The woman, a Massachusetts resident from an African-American and Puerto Rican…