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Arriving on the 50th anniversary of its events, Freedom Riders is an account of those first months of the American Civil Rights movement, specifically Birmingham in 1961. Fresh off of 2 separate Supreme Court desegregation decisions that had been ignored by large swaths of the South, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) [...]

Any of you who are old enough (like me) to remember the heyday of record stores, especially of Tower Records, may remember a classical music recording that was one of the first true crossover phenomenons – A Feather on the Breath of God, by Hildegard von Bingen. At the time, it [...]

Director Lisa Cholodenko, who also helmed Video Station favorite Laurel Canyon, has brought us another well-crafted and deeply affecting film in The Kids Are All Right. Lesbian couple Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are happily raising their two teenage children, who were conceived by artificial insemination, in sunny Los Angeles. The elder child, [...]

Love Ranch is the story of the Mustang Ranch brothel, which opened in the Nevada desert in the late 1960’s. Taylor Hackford (Ray) directs his wife, Helen Mirren (Oscar for The Queen), and Joe Pesci (Oscar for Goodfellas) in an unevenly entertaining film. I say unevenly because I suppose your reaction will depend [...]

HBO has done it again with this Barry Levinson (Diner)-directed film about Jack Kevorkian, the famed Dr. Death of the 1990’s. This pay-TV channel seems to have found the magic formula for producing terrific movies that the big studios won’t touch; long known for its serious series like The Sopranos, Deadwood, Big [...]

Here is a new theory of evolution: the Italian culture of high art, so ingrained in their national consciousness, now seems to be virtually in their genes. We all know that the supreme flowering was the Renaissance, with its incomparable painting and sculpture, but the great art form of the [...]

The City of Your Final Destination is the first Merchant-Ivory film to be produced after the death of producer Ismail Merchant. As directed by the now 82-year-old James Ivory, City is an actor’s showcase, nominally about a young man attempting to write an authorized biography of a deceased South American writer.

Why aren’t more films shot in black and white? Director Francis Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) asks this question during his wonderful commentary track for his new film, Tetro, within the context of stating that the vast majority of his favorite films of all time were indeed filmed in black [...]

If, like me, you are a fan of absorbing storytelling, gorgeous visuals, and an elegant and subtle camera, then you’ll love Pedro Almodóvar’s Broken Embraces.
It’s amazing to me how such an accomplished visual storyteller can also create such intricate, precise scripts, packed with verbal exposition, yet matched by visual [...]

The Dardenne brothers, here directing their fifth feature (Rosetta, La Promesse, The Son, and L’Enfant), have another singular creation. Always solidly in the sphere of Rossellini working-class neo-realism, les Dardennes have this time chosen the story of a young Albanian immigrant in Liege, Belgium, who does what she must to survive, instinctively behaving morally as [...]