One of the hottest titles at this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival is coming to West Bend, and the wait won’t be long. “Almost Sunrise,” the festival’s Centerpiece Film, concerns two Iraq veterans now battling depression, anxiety and guilt. Together they embark on a 2,700-mile mental health march from Milwaukee to Santa Monica. Along the way, […]
2016 Milwaukee Film Festival: Week Two Picks Read More »
Who knew Bud Selig likes fabulist movies spoken in Farsi? There he was, sitting directly behind me during a 2010 Milwaukee Film Festival screening of Shirin Neshat’s “Women Without Men,” a work of magic realism about four Tehran women. I’ve often had the good fortune of bumping into public figures at festivals—Harold Ramis, Susan Sarandon
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Topping my Netflix queue today are “The Forbidden Room,” an absurdist ode to early cinema from Canada, and “Winter Sleep,” a prizewinning drama from Turkey. If we scroll past the blockbusters, the relentless, rotating inventories of streaming services remind us that unique movies are always being made all over the world—and that filmgoers seldom have
Introducing the 2016 Milwaukee Film Festival Read More »
In his compulsively readable new book “Movie Freak: My Life Watching Movies,” film critic Owen Gleiberman recommends limiting one’s intake at film festivals to three movies per day. Four movies or more, Gleiberman contends, is just too many, and keeping one’s slate to three “guarantees you won’t fail to respond to the nuances in that
Preview: 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival Read More »
Danny made the “suicidal” guess that “Mad Max: Fury Road” would win big. I hope he’s right, but I think he’s wrong! BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: “The Big Short,” “Bridge of Spies,” “Brooklyn,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “The Martian,” “The Revenant,” “Room,” “Spotlight.” PERSONAL PICK: “Mad Max: Fury Road.” PREDICTION: “The Revenant.”
James Frazier’s 2016 Oscar Picks and Predictions Read More »
Contrary to what some websites have decided in recent years, Oscar predicting should not be a year-round game. The winners are not to be obsessed over, as they fade from memory quicker than most things. But on the day of the ceremony, it makes for a fun game. This year, I managed to see every
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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
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
2015 Milwaukee Film Festival: Eric Beltmann’s Top Five Read More »
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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It’s a sorry festivalgoer that doesn’t make at least one deep cut discovery. Much of the ink spilled about the Milwaukee Film Festival, given its rising cultural cachet, is devoted to the Competition and Spotlight programming. (If you haven’t heard, Saturday’s centerpiece is the nonfiction “The Great Alone,” about four-time Iditarod champion Lance Mackey frosting
2015 Milwaukee Film Festival: Week One Picks Read More »
