Reviews of independent cinema
SEPTEMBER 7, 2015 The plot of the new German melodrama “Phoenix” is absolutely preposterous. And the film itself is absolutely wonderful. Stay with me here. Nelly (Nina Hoss) is a…
SEPTEMBER 1, 2015 Let’s stop calling Lily Tomlin “a national treasure.” That phrase always suggests to me someone who is merely resting on her laurels. That’s not Lily. Within the…
AUGUST 27, 2015 On September 12, 2008, novelist David Foster Wallace hanged himself in his garage. The author of the acclaimed novel “Infinite Jest” was 46. Wallace went on an…
AUGUST 25, 2015 The new indie gem “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” may be as American as apple pie, but its liberated sensibilities about sex feel very very French.…
AUGUST 13, 2015 It was the same ritual every year. A group of us would meet to see the latest Woody Allen film together on Opening Day. We would wander…
AUGUST 11, 2015 When I heard that Ian McKellen was to be cast as Sherlock Holmes, I imagined him with a sparkle in his eye, a spring in his step…
AUGUST 10, 2015 Today they are all over the cable news landscape. They’re labeled as “strategists,” and both parties use them to make their talking points again and again. Yes,…
AUGUST 5, 2015 If your average art-house moviegoer knows anything about “Tangerine,” it’s probably the fact that the entire film was famously shot on an iPhone 5s. You’d never know…
JULY 28, 2015 Director Asif Kapadia caused quite a stir in 2011 with his acclaimed documentary on the life of the late Formula One racing driver Ayrton Senna. With “Senna,”…
JULY 22, 2015 In 1971, Stanford University psychology professor Philip Zimbardo set out to discover whether the cause of prison violence between guards and inmates rests not in outside forces…
