FOLLOW US
.Movies
Mar 12, 2024
Film Review: ‘The American Society of Magical Negroes’
Consider The American Society of Magical Negroes a live-wire conversation-starter of a movie title that automatically opens up a pertinent social issue discussion.
Writer-director Koby Libii’s satirical fantasy deliberately chose a hot-button phrase. As explained in the film’s...
Mar 5, 2024
Film Review: ‘Cabrini’ as Lady Liberty
Aside from specialty items by religious film producers, it’s unusual for general audiences to find major releases that concern themselves with spiritual matters and figures from organized religion. That’s one of the reasons why director Alejandro Monteverde’s...
Mar 5, 2024
Oscars 2024: What Will Win for Best Picture?
Here’s something I don’t even consider the tiniest of hot takes: I don’t care about the Oscars. Okay, I guess I sort of do. I enjoy guessing who’s going to win and getting all butt hurt about...
Feb 27, 2024
Film Review: ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ Goes Nowhere
A few questions pop up about Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls.
The film has writing problems. As cobbled together by veteran producer-director-writer Coen (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, etc.) and his wife and frequent collaborator Tricia Cooke, it’s...
Feb 13, 2024
Tran Anh Hung’s French Epicurean Romance
Sunshine filters through the garden windows in Dodin Bouffant’s kitchen, suffusing the space with golden light and golden shadows. Most of the dramatic action in Anh Hung Tran’s The Taste of Things emanates from that luminous kitchen,...
Feb 13, 2024
Ava DuVernay’s New Film Makes the Caste Connection
What does the act of a racist vigilante have to do with the caste system in India that works to the detriment of the Dalits, Jewish people during the Holocaust and the system of slavery that’s in...
Feb 6, 2024
Cauleen Smith’s Visual Jazz
Cauleen Smith is an award-winning multimedia artist and filmmaker whose work is being featured at Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive Feb. 8-11. A retrospective of her most notable short films—from a total of 20 since...
