Oh, to live in a time when there was almost always a Western playing at the local cinema. While the once respected genre has been almost completely put out to pasture, we are graced by the occasional treat of a new “oater”. Brian Skiba’s “Dead Man’s Hand” is the latest.

While filmmakers such as Kevin Costner and Walter Hill can still get their Western excursions in cinemas, 99% of today’s westerns are made

Given his notorious history of heists one might assume that Gerald Blanchard would stay out of sight. Or at least keep his mouth shut. Yet Blanchard’s narcissism, for it can be labeled as nothing else, will not allow him to stay mum about his life of crime. Thankfully, filmmaker Landon Van Soest gives Blanchard just enough rope to air out his dirty laundry for the whole world to enjoy in the new documentary “The Jewel Thief,” premiering this week on Hulu.

The twenty five year-old title character in Carolina Cavelli’s debut feature “Amanda” is something of a heroine.

Played by Benedetta Porcaroli, Amanda is from an upper-middle-class family who are cold and seem to fear any semblance of emotion who are closed off from the world, safe in their country manor. Every relationship between the women of the family overflows with conflict.

To New Yorkers Fresh Kills is a landfill on Staten Island but for those who attended the recent Tribeca festival it’s the best film of the festival. Rather than make the obvious comparisons with Jennifer Esposito’s Tribeca debut which, due to the mobster genre of her film likens her to another Italian American filmmaker and New York native, I chose to highlight her against a historical context. I do so because to call Esposito a “Female

It’s always great to be first.  This weekend the nation’s capital saw the premiere of DC/DOX, a new film festival dedicated to truth in filmmaking. 

Opening night kicked off at the National Portrait Gallery, where festival founders Jamie Shor and Sky Sitney spoke about the necessity of founding a new venue for documentaries in the capital in the wake of AFI DOCS, which used to be

If we’re lucky we grow up with our parents and grandparents present in our lives. But very few of us have a grandparent who helped found one of the major Hollywood studios. Filmmaker Gregory Orr learned one day just how powerful was his step-grandfather, Jack L. Warner, when the studio mogul ran every red light along Sunset Blvd. A watchful police officer pulled him over, but upon catching the name on the driver’s license, let Warner and

It’s so wonderful to see in-person film festivals having returned with gusto. Even though I wasn’t able to travel to New York for Tribeca, thanks to the miracle of the hybrid format—refined thanks to the covid pandemic—I was able to check out an amazing amount of documentaries and narratives. Check out below for a roundup of some of the best festival entries I saw for this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

With a haunting Warhol-esque presentation of imagery and an artful gaze worthy of comparison to Peter Greenway and Derek Jarman Georden West’s “Playland” is an unquestionably unique experience. 

The film is, at once, a documentary and an avant-garde reenactment that examines Boston’s Playland Café; a haven to the city’s gay community and one where

Taylor Sheridan has nine shows on TV and more coming. The Oscar-nominated writer is the co-creator of “Yellowstone,” the cable TV modern western starring Kevin Costner that has racked up a rabid fanbase and been a serious moneymaker for the Paramount Network. Sheridan’s list of accolades—to say nothing of his bank account—will only continue to grow.

Yet as famous as Sheridan is

I freely admit the main reason I went to “The Flash” was with eager anticipation for the return of Michael Keaton as Batman. So be it, but as “The Flash” and its time- and universe-bending plot undertook its twists and turns, I found so much more to enjoy than Keaton being back in the bat-saddle as the Caped Crusader. For his performance, I (and, it must be said, the entire preview audience) was enraptured and cheering—but this is a Flash movie