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There’s a time-honored tradition of sitcom stars (Mystery Team features Community’s Donald Glover, Parks and Recreation’s Aubrey Plaza, and 30 Rock’s John Lutz and Kevin Brown) making feature films to emphasize the stuff they can’t do on TV. Mystery Team delivers on that score: it’s not for anyone too squeamish about assorted bodily functions, or […]

Two we caught recently –
Bigger, Stronger, Faster
Surprising, thought-provoking documentary about anabolic steroids and other performance enhancers, in and out of pro sports, from a medical, ethical, and personal perspective — director/narrator/co-writer Chris Bell is himself a former professional wrestler, but his instincts for engaging storytelling and incisive interviewing both seem sharp. (His structural approach and […]

. . .in time to contribute at least a little something:
Do It Again: One Man’s Quest to Reunite the Kinks.
Sounds like a very interesting project — hope it gets finished, is accepted into some festivals, lands a distribution deal and plays somewhere I can catch it, and ultimately gets a DVD release I can get my hands […]

With the screening of Welcome to Academia at the Brattle we got a survey from the film-makers full of stock intro-course questions, like “Which character did you find easiest to relate to? Why?”*
It was so hard to be constructive.
Kirk Davis and Elzbieta Szoka seem to have concocted their dark comedy** of sexual and power dynamics […]

Two more from the Fall 2009 Eye-Opener at The Brattle (. . . and my wonderful fiancée already ably covered American Casino, our most recent screening.)
I didn’t hate Summerhood, Jacob Medjuck’s distillation of summer camp experiences, and I didn’t think it was terrible, but so many aspects of it were seriously flawed that it’s difficult […]

Good golly, it’s been a while.
My wonderful girlfriend and I are attending the current Eye-Opener series at The Brattle. We’ve been to 2 screenings so far.
I appreciate Voy a explotar (I’m Going to Explode) a little more after thinking about it post-screening, which is not to say I enjoyed it, or that I thought […]

Stingray Sam is the new space-western/musical from Cory McAbee of The American Astronaut fame. It compromises 6 10-minute episodes. Each mixes John Borruso’s surreal and colorful collages and expository narration by David Hyde Pierce with live-action black & white footage of Stingray Sam (McAbee), his partner The Quasar Kid (Crugie) and their friends and enemies. […]

The Higher Force (Stóra planið) is certainly not your typical gangster movie. David (Pétur Jóhann Sigfússon) is a singularly feckless hoodlum in a gang ineptly led by Magnus (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson). David would really rather be a poet, and he’s haunted by an old secret. His new landlord Harald (Eggert Þorleifsson) claims to be a […]