Inarritu sets off on a new filmmaking journey By T. T. Stern-Enzi With “Amores Perros,” “21 Grams” and “Babel,” Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga forged a collaborative filmmaking partnership that generated stories grounded in a triptych structure that deconstructed time and narrative form into piercing slivers of emotional diamonds. And for their efforts, […]
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Has a decade of diversity come to an end?
‘For Colored girls’ (and other Folks) Who continue to Feel Invisible When Searching For Onscreen Reflections By T. T. Stern-Enzi There have always been urban films, from the black exploitation films of the 1970s to the comic movies that capitalized on stand-up performers transitioning to the mainstream to the hood action dramas infused with hip […]
‘Rabbit Hole’
‘Rabbit Hole’ treats the addictive power of grief By T.T. Stern-Enzi From the start, “Rabbit Hole” seems to be looking up at the world from a position of frustration and regret. Suburbia is a place of artificial security, away from the harsh urban reality, an unsettling dreamscape we pretend does not share a border with […]
Lesser-known love stories
Bonus Features: Recent DVD releases to bring home this February By T.T. Stern-Enzi Erich Segal is best known as the author of “Love Story,” the sentimental weeper starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw with the classic line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Segal, a Yale contemporary of Tommy Lee Jones and Vice […]
Another Year
Leslie Manville makes “Another Year” more than just another Mike Leigh production By T.T. Stern-Enzi Rating: PG-13 Grade: A There is a particular genius to the filmmaking process of Mike Leigh. The celebrated British director of “Life is Sweet,” “Secrets & Lies,” “Vera Drake” and “Happy-Go-Lucky” is famous for drafting story and character outlines and […]
The Second Annual Yellow Springs Short Film Festival
A local celebration of the short form By T.T. Stern-Enzi Noted writer Raymond Carver, who died prematurely in 1988, devoted himself to the art of the short story, becoming one of the great American practitioners of the form (along with displaying equal facility in poetry). Director Robert Altman paid tribute to Carver’s work in “Short […]
Blue Valentine
A dark bluesy ode to love By T.T. Stern-Enzi Rating: R Grade: B+ “No Strings Attached” captured hearts and the opening weekend box office by giving audiences the same old, same old vision of love, which, in the end, isn’t really about love at all. Love doesn’t live at the multiplex; the reflection of it that […]
Fragmentation of the audience
The ongoing evolution and culture of movie watching. By T.T. Stern-Enzi Once upon a time, people watched movies in movie theaters as a collective whole. We paid a few pennies for silent films with cowboys hijacking stagecoaches and the thrill of watching a man fire a gun straight at us, worrying, if only for a second, […]
Made in Dagenham
Sally Hawkins’s crusading feminist in ‘Dagenham’ very likable By T.T. Stern-Enzi Rating: R Grade: B Sally Hawkins impressed me immeasurably in “Never Let Me Go,” Mark Romanek’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s bestselling novel, which left me cold with its snow-globe detail that sealed out almost any sense of genuine emotion. The faint hint of humanity stirring […]
War Horse
Spielberg presents the story of a boy, his horse and the war that separates them By T.T. Stern-Enzi Steven Spielberg, contemporary film’s sentimental serialist, strikes again with this heart-tugging story about young Albert (Jeremy Irvine), a British farm boy who enlists to fight in World War I after his father (Peter Mullan) sells his horse, […]
Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Fiore’s latest ‘toon!
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Debate Commentary 03/18
Your computer files might be protected by more than just a password By Alex Culpepper One of the freedoms under […]