Australia
Directed by Baz Luhrman
Drama, 165 Minutes
One of the great pleasures of the movies is seeing what a purposeful filmmaker can do with an old genre or story by attempting to remake it in her or his own image. Such was the case with Baz Luhrman’s last film, 2001’s Moulin Rouge, his hyperkinetic reinvention of the [...]
How many children does Lady Macbeth have? That’s the kind of ridiculous question a certain strain of literature teacher will torture students with. The answer, obviously, is: Shakespeare would have told us, had it been important. Nevertheless, there are a few characters who so transcend their storylines that they really do acquire lives of their [...]
In the 10 years since the release of The Big Lebowski, a few things happened. Cell phones overtook our public spaces. The internet colonized our private time. George W. Bush won once in the popular vote and twice in the electoral college. On a single morning, terrorists brought down the twin towers, destroyed part of [...]
Appaloosa
Narrative, 108 min
Directed by Ed Harris
Once upon a time in the American cinema, the western was king. Between the silent era and the late 1970’s, the U.S. film industry churned out thousands of western movies, most of them toward the end of that time starring Clint Eastwood. Not so today, when fans [...]
Righteous Kill
Drama, 101 min
Directed by Jon Avnet
The buddy cop film has been a staple of the American cinema since at least the 1970’s, and it’s been tooled for everything from suspense to comedy to straight action, but rarely has it actually been about friendship. That makes Righteous Kill, the new cop drama teaming Robert [...]
The Edge of Heaven (Auf der anderen Seite)
Directed by Fatih Akin
October 3-5, Bijou
There is an old poem by Horace that celebrates simple country living; its surprise ending is that the whole thing turns out to be the pitch of a city dweller trying to sell some rural property. During the Olympics, there was a series [...]
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is celebrating this fall its 50th anniversary as an object of obsession for movie lovers. This year also marks the less-auspicious 15th anniversary of when I became obsessed with it in the commons room of a college dorm. Though I squirmed right off the filthy couch at the final [...]
A summer full of festivals winds down this week with the second annual Landlocked Film Festival. This year, Iowa City’s umbrella organization Summer of the Arts wove Landlocked into the fold, giving the fledgling festival a bigger profile than last year’s inaugural event.
What I See When I Close My Eyes
Documentary, 29 min
Directed by Leslie Hope
Landlocked: Saturday, August 23, 12:30pm as part of the kid-friendly program.
The Khmer Rouge just cannot catch a break. Every director since Roland Joffe has wanted to portray them as the Asian equivalent of the Third Reich, despite the fact that decades of political [...]
Monster Camp
Documentary, 90 min
Directed by Cullen Hoback
Hardacre: Friday, August 1, 6:00pm
For all the types of two types of people in this world, this documentary highlights possibly the most psychologically fascinating. 1) Those who escape their lives by socially acceptable methods (alcohol, affairs and pornography, to name a few) and 2) those who create character lives [...]
