Superstar: the Karen Carpenter Story

Whatever Greta Gerwig may have intended with her new Barbie movie, the upshot is that the film has single-handedly wiped away whatever anti-Barbie sentiment had been building up across six decades' worth of young girls growing up with distorted ideas of what their bodies should look like as adults. Tall, blonde, and with breasts that …

Silkwood

Imagine a movie with Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, and Cher. Imagine it being directed by award-winner Mike Nichols, and being co-written by Nora Ephron of When Harry Met Sally fame. Seems like an instant Hollywood classic, yet Silkwood, which is that film, lounges in the dusty corners of forgotten cinema. Which is a real shame, …

Shine

The 1997 Academy Awards were dubbed "Independents' Day" due to the rare prevalence of independent films in all the big category nominations, with films like Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies and The Coen Brothers' Fargo getting more attention than their respective authors were used to. Still, it was the unknown Australian director Scott Hicks who …

Chopper

The first thing you see in Chopper is a disclaimer announcing that this movie is a work of fiction. Based on real-life criminal Mark "Chopper" Reade's various memoirs, it's an interesting way to start a biopic- by telling you it's all fake. But the further you get into director Andrew Dominik's debut film, the more …

The Naked Civil Servant

Quentin Crisp may have been somewhat forgotten in today's mainstream culture, even though a lot of mainstream culture owes its current shape to him. An unabashedly and flamboyantly gay man living in an era (starting with the 1920's) and a place (England) where such an orientation was not only unaccepted, but expected to be kept …

A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries

Merchant & Ivory made many films in their decades together as both co-workers and life partners, some of them absolute masterpieces (Remains of the Day) and others... not so much, though they're all, at least, intelligent and tastefully done. Watching a lesser-known M&I film, then, is a bit of a risk- you know it will …

I Shot Andy Warhol

The New York City art scene is a perennial source of American Myth that every hipster- no matter what generation they're from- romanticizes at some point in their life. From the Velvet Underground to Basquiat, the amount of books, movies, and music generated that deal with these various icons seems endless- and most of it …