Franco Nero is without question one of the most prolific actors in modern cinema, having appeared in nearly 240 features starting in the 1960’s. The son of a carabinieri (police officer), Nero was born in Parma on November 23, 1941. His first major international exposure was in John Huston’s 1966 film The Bible, in which…
They brought them in suitcases and in trunks, tucked into the corners of boats and, later, on airplanes. Seeds that became rapini, cardoons, artichokes, cucuzza squash. Cuttings from knobby grape vines that flourished into backyard arbors. And, above all, bits of stick that grew into fig trees. Starting in the late 1800s, when Italian immigrants…
Anyone watching “Promising Young Woman” should get college credit toward their Gender Studies degree. Few films wear their activism on their sleeve quite like Emerald Fennell’s directorial debut. It’s like a candy-colored TED talk on sexual assault. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonThat’s not always a bad thing. In-your-face messaging can work…
Historians are going to have their work cut out for them when they try to bring sense to the strange cascade that has been 2020. Every month brought something that seemed more eventful than the last. Then came the monoliths. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonIf—by a force more mystifying than the…
One of my favorite narrative arcs in kung fu films is the process of training: the process by which a young person is transformed both spiritually and physically into a master of martial arts and philosophy. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is a masterpiece in creating the narrative of the transformation. The young hero in…
A little more than 60 Royal Bengal tigers roam Bardia National Park, around one-fourth the total tiger population in Nepal. Together with the adjacent Banke National Park, Bardia forms part of the 860 square mile Tiger Conservation Unit, where visitors have a sporting chance of seeing the usually elusive great cats in the wild. Read…
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 lends his ear to a pair of filmmakers sharing their love and knowledge of Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts. The films of Ray Harryhausen have been an inspiration for…
There is a place in North Carolina where some believe you can make a phone call to those who passed on. In Marshall, just north of Asheville, resides a phone booth that contains a disconnected rotary phone. Visitors enter the booth, dial, and talk to those who they have not forgotten. The concept behind the…
In the early 20th century, a mining boom swept through Western Colorado and Eastern Utah in search of vanadium, a valuable element used to reinforce steel. Uravan began as a single mill and quickly boomed once the U.S. Vanadium Corporation discovered rich deposits in the surrounding valley. But vanadium became overshadowed by another element found…
When is an open-world game too open? Journeying through the world of Ubisoft’s “Immortals Fenyx Rising,” now available on next-gen consoles and the last generation, leads to a sense of open exploration that’s tempered by a lack of direction. There’s always something to do in this game, from major and minor story missions to the…
Aspiration gets in the way of life in Sylvie’s Love, the latest from writer/director Eugene Ashe. Sylvie has her passions, but none of them seem very practical for a Black woman in the ’50s. She knows a lot about music from her father’s record shop, and she knows a lot about TV from hours spent in…
John Eliot was a missionary who came from Cambridge, England to Boston in 1630. His major interest was the conversion of the native population of Massachusetts Bay. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonThis desire led him to translate the Bible and other religious material into the Wampanoag dialect of Native Americans, who…
In north Georgia, near Blood Mountain and the southern terminus of the more than 2,000 mile long Appalachian Trail, many unsuspecting travelers are struck by the strange sight of hundreds of hiking boots. The shoes can be seen hanging from the trees outside the Walasi-Yi Interpretive Center. Read moreA Guide to The Perfect Bong Joon-ho MarathonOn…
This article is part of our 2020 Rewind. Follow along as we explore the best and most interesting movies, shows, performances, and more from this very strange year. In this entry, we explore the best animated series of 2020. Despite production delays and shifting release dates due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 has still delivered…
Set 200 years in our future, The Expanse is as much a sci-fi series as it is a political drama. Everyone wants to colonize the solar system and it’s a race to the start line. Earth is run by the United Nations, Mars is an independent nation terraforming its way to a greener future, and…
Streaming might be the future, but physical media is still the present. It’s also awesome, depending on the title, the label, and the release, so each week we take a look at the new Blu-rays and DVDs making their way into the world. Welcome to this week in Home Video for December 15th, 2020! This week’s…
“Take a trip with Ben Wheatley.” Neon has revealed a quick 30-second teaser of footage for Ben Wheatley’s new film In the Earth, which was just announced today as part of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival official selection. Wheatley already released a film earlier this year, the new take on Rebecca, but secretly shot this…
The role of women within the horror genre has been in a constant state of flux from its very fruition: early films, such as Dracula (1931) and Psycho (1960), featured satanic entities and murderers, while contemporary takes, like Paranormal Activity (2011) and Scream (1996), brought imagined hauntings and slasher films into the mix. However, all of…
The upcoming Sundance Film Festival will be going virtual next month (with satellite screenings in select cities), premiering fewer films in total than previous years. But that doesn’t make the full lineup of 72 features sound any less enticing. Even if we won’t be able to check out the films in Park City, the lineup promises the festival’s grab-bag of debut…
Rachel Brosnahan plays a woman whose loyalty and patience are tested to the breaking point in Julia Hart’s “I’m Your Woman.” Brosnahan’s Jean and her newborn baby must go into hiding after her criminal husband announces that things have become too unstable for him on streets. His confidant, Cal (Arinze Kene), takes Jean to a…
Following his 2017 zombie flick with a humane twist, The Cured, Irish filmmaker David Freyne returns with a coming-of-age tale about… well, coming out – which at first, sounds like a far cry from the flesh-eating pandemonium that preceded it. Yet, there’s one thing that both films have in common and it remains unspoken –…