Some time shortly after the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States, a number of media outlets searching for more “human interest” stories about the meaning behind the first black president stumbled upon the story of Eugene Allen, a White House butler who’d worked for seven different…
Fans and creators of sci-fi love to talk about the power of the genre being in its ability to use analogy to depict our current world, using its fantastic backdrop to push modern mores and conventional wisdom to extremes in order to test how accurate or worthwhile…
When we think of film noir, we think of few things over and over: Humphrey Bogart, dim lights and dark shadows, Humphrey Bogart (hey, he played Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, what do you want?), thugs with guns, and dames that are never up to any good…
Those Treaty Oak Collective folks are sponsoring a cool (if somewhat odd for them, generally speaking) thing tonight, Friday, June 21st, up at Domy Books on Westheimer…
As with any niche, there’s a caricature about world cinema. It is slow, it is minimalist, and it tends away from straightforward entertainment and more towards naturalism, to the point of distraction. Basically, it’s Tokyo Story on and on…
Mediocre movies are all alike; bad movies are each bad in their own unique way. The bad movies come from people who just don’t know what they’re doing, or have had tremendously bad luck. The mediocre movies, more often, are from the talented who have lost the plot completely…
In case you’ve never tried to read it, Les Misérables is really, really long; one of the longest books ever written. So, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, “there is too much, let me sum up.” In post-Napoleonic France, money is scarce…
After the searing portrait of the French crime world and the lurid look at a life corrupted in 2010’s A Prophet, it seemed only natural that writer-director Jacques Audiard would follow up with a relationship drama about an underground MMA fighter (Matthias Schoenaerts) and a killer whale trainer (Marion Cotillard), so it should surprise no one…
This weekend, the Taiwanese Ministry of Culture will be showcasing one of the most popular films to come out of Taiwan in the last several years, and it’s completely worth your time…
Houston-born filmmaker Jonathan Caouette creates a touching take on the road trip movie in Walk Away Renee, the sequel to his lauded 2003 documentary Tarnation…
And now, on to today — Saturday, September 29th — and holy crap, there’s a lot going on. Seriously, there’s so much happening this afternoon/evening that I’m pretty sure I’m actually missing a bunch of it. Damn…
God, I would have loved to have been in the pitch meeting for this thing. “Okay, so it’s like The Terminator, right? Except John Connor’s the bad guy, and the Terminator’s target is himself. Oh, and people can move shit with their minds…
Bikram yoga and comic books come together in Gayby, a movie about Jenn (Jenn Harris), a thirty-something yoga instructor who decides that single life isn’t enough and asks her gay best friend Matt…
The Asia Society Texas partners with Q-Fest to present “Focus on Asia,” two documentary films that examine the notions of gender and identity within Asian cultures. The presentation begins with Wariazone…
Last year, Beauty was submitted as South Africa’s entry into the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 84th Academy Awards. It’s easy to see why, as Oliver Hermanus, wearing the hats of both director and writer…
Q-Fest kicks off at Museum of Fine Arts Houston Thursday night when the Southwest Alternative Media Project partners to bring award winning director Thom Fitzgerald‘s third feature Cloudburst to town…
Killer Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) kills people. For $20,000, he will take care of any problem you have, permanently. That is, when he’s not tied by his day job as Dallas homicide detective. And that’s the good news…
This is not the Steve Jobs you remember from the keynote speeches at product unveilings. This is Steve Jobs in exile like Napoleon or Machiavelli, patiently planning his triumphant return. Here he is not the master of the universe…
Y’know, I’ll be up-front about it: back in the days of my post-college almost-youth, I wasn’t big into KARP. Didn’t hate ’em or anything, mind you, but I wasn’t a big fan; my tastes back then only sporadically ran that far to the “noisy” end of the punk spectrum…
While music is mostly what I tend to pay attention to, yeah, I’m also a sucker for movies of all sorts. Which is why I get all excited & happy every time a film festival rolls through our fair city (even though I rarely get the opportunity to actual go to ’em, these days…)
What? How in the hell did I just hear about this? sigh. Stumbled across a little note on FB this afternoon about a screening tonight & tomorrow (Wed., October 26th & Thurs., October 27th, obviously) at 14 Pews…
You might remember back in the spring, when word popped up about an in-the-works documentary on the scene here in Houston back in the early ’90s…
Gotta love those {Two Star Symphony} folks — they always, always come up with neat stuff to do, far beyond the normal “hey-we’re-playing-a-show” deal… This coming Saturday, October 8th, they’ll be over at The Orange Show…
Dangit, how does it always do that to me? I’ve meant to check out the Houston Palestinian Film Festival literally for years now — this its fifth year of existence, I’m told — but every time, it sneaks up on me…
Howl is composed from court records, interviews, and Allen Ginsberg‘s epic poem Howl. James Franco, as Ginsberg, reads the poem from a coffee house stage, explains it to an unseen interviewer…
In 2004, award-winning film maker Reggie “Bird” Oliver visited DJ Screw‘s grave with Screw’s mother a week before her death and promised her he’d do whatever he could to tell the world about her son’s accomplishments…
Premiering at the MFAH December 16-19, director Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Dogtooth is the family unit as Madagascar. An isolated, claustrophobic, continental island where familiar situations play out counter-clockwise…
In 2007, director Frederick Wiseman applied his renowned cinema verité to Austin, Texas’ Lord’s Gym. Without interviews or narrators, Wiseman employs the patience of a Buddha, waiting for events to unfold around him…
Tonight at the MFAH, Soul Kitchen premieres, as part of the museum’s Premieres: Contemporary World Cinema series…
Holy crap. There are an insane number of cool-sounding shows going on tomorrow, Saturday, November 13th — I mean, seriously, a shitload of good shows, so many I’m pretty sure I’m missing some. Here goes…
I spent last night at DiverseWorks, previewing director/artist Brent Green‘s sculpture installation and talking about Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then…
Every year, the Houston Film Commission curates a 90-minute collection of the six best Texas-made short films. The Film Commission then showcases the collection…
Canal Plus‘ and IFC Films‘ new five-hour epic about the international terrorist-revolutionary commonly known as “Carlos the Jackal,” Carlos, remedies everything that’s wrong with American studios’ action movies…
Henry Diltz shot the photo for The Doors’ Morrison Hotel album cover. He tells a great story about that photograph in the liner notes to his DVD Legends of The Canyon, detailing life in the Los Angeles music scene in the late 1960s…
With the explosion of social media and the mainstreaming of virtual relationships, it was inevitable — and maybe even necessary — that someone was going to try and document (in fiction or non-) what that explosion’s actually like and how it affects us as human beings…
Children are creepy. That’s the main thing to keep in mind while watching Let Me In, the English-language remake of Tomas Alfredson‘s fantastic vampire film Let the Right One In…
What a freaking week, I swear…I feel like I’ve barely stopped moving the whole damn time. Ready for a bit of a break, so I’m obviously happy to see the weekend come rolling in (as it generally does)… Sadly, it’ll have to be a brief one…
We’re probably going to be writing about Facebook forever. For the next generation, at least. It has become the symbol of 21st century interpersonal communication and the first generation to grow up fully in the information age. And that means, fairly or not, it’s also the symbol of everything that’s wrong with modern interpersonal communication, as well…
In 1968 Andy Mann was one of the only people in New York City with a video camera. He carried it every where he went, and he was treated like a god, an anchorman, or something in between…
This one’s pretty unique; ran across it at the 2008 Zine Fest deal at The Shady Tavern and was immediately impressed as hell. It’s teeny-tiny (literally only 8 pages, including the cover), but very nicely done, laid out well & a hell of a lot more legible…
