October 2015

2015 Milwaukee Film Festival - Times Cinema - Photo by Eric Beltmann

Conversation: Critics Eric Beltmann and Shelly Sampon React to the 2015 Milwaukee Film Festival

If no one talks about it, does a movie exist? Perhaps the real meaning of a film festival lies in its sidewalk chatter. Even though the 2015 Milwaukee Film Festival closed Oct. 8, Critic Speak contributor Eric Beltmann and The Cinemaphile blogger Shelly Sampon lengthened the festival through one more conversation. Eric Beltmann: I think …

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Review: “Steve Jobs”

“I’m going to put music in your pocket. One hundred songs. No, 500. I’m going to put between 500 and 1,000 songs in your pocket,” Steve Jobs blurts out to his college-aged daughter Lisa (Perla Haney-Jardine)—yes, the same daughter whose paternity he vulgarly denied in the pages of Time magazine over a decade earlier—in the …

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"The Look of Silence"

2015 Milwaukee Film Festival: Eric Beltmann’s Top Five

Perhaps there are too many movies. When I started writing professionally about cinema 24 years ago, seeing all the key films that received North American distribution—blockbusters, indies, foreign releases—was a feasible proposition, but now that technology has democratized the medium and swelled access to motion pictures of all stripes, it’s impossible to stay ahead of …

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Matt Damon relaxes on Mars in Ridley Scott's "The Martian."

Review: “The Martian”

“The Martian,” when it succeeds, does so despite itself. It is a survival-in-space movie almost entirely free of tension, its tone set always to comic relief, its grand imagination and serious plot almost completely ruined by its own sarcasm. The film stars Matt Damon as Mark Watney, an astronaut in dire straights. After the crew …

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Benicio del Toro aims a gun in "Sicario."

Review: “Sicario”

“Nothing will make sense to your American ears, And you will doubt everything we do. But in the end, you will understand.” So says a character in Denis Villeneuve’s outstanding “Sicario.” These prophetic words haunt both the audience and protagonist until they suddenly crystallize. The film is like a whodunit where instead of a crime, there’s a philosophical …

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David Byrne fronts Talking Heads in Jonathan Demme's "Stop Making Sense," for which the Milwaukee Film Festival is hosting a dance-a-long at the Oriental Theatre.

2015 Milwaukee Film Festival: Week Two Picks

You’ve heard of sing-along movies, but what about the dance-along? Milwaukee Film Festival patrons are encouraged to unlock their bodies Saturday night during “Stop Making Sense” (Oriental Theatre, 11 p.m.), Jonathan Demme’s euphoric 1984 concert film about the Talking Heads and the ever-expanding big suit worn by frontman David Byrne. Playing for the third consecutive …

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