Director and star James Franco’s ode to artistic ambition and invention — two things which, it should go without saying, have no necessary connection to artistic excellence or triumph. Indeed, if you really want to examine them in their purest form, you’re probably better off focusing on a failure — …
This plays as part of the 2017 San Diego International Film Festival. The program notes describe it as, "David Butler is a discouraged but optimistic high school English teacher struggling to connect with his uninterested students. So when honor student Lucas Ward (Dylan Sprouse) transfers into his class, he's thrilled …
Director and co-writer Sebastián Leilo’s story of a black sheep’s return to the pen (though not the fold) hits three notes of a religious chord: faith rejected, faith endured, and faith tested. The first sounds clean and clear, embodied with captivating grace and power by Rachel Weisz as a rabbi’s …
A fair and balanced overview of the wonderful, horrible life of Roger Ailes: Republican kingmaker, architect of Fox News, and bullying pimp to woman in his employ. (His pickup line of choice: “If you want to play with the big boys, you have to lay with the big boys.”) Early …
In a town of Neanderthals (and that’s just the women), Nora (Marie Leuenberger) takes it upon herself to rally the locals in favor of petitioning to give ladies the vote. The most liberating moment in this otherwise conventional tale of suffrage coming to a small Swiss village in the early …
What is a dog’s purpose? In Lasse Hallström’s take on W. Bruce Cameron’s canine POV novel, it’s to distract you from a dizzying, at times painful array of contradictions by looking soulfully at the camera. At heart, it’s a Hindu saga, picking a doggie’s soul (gamely voiced by Josh Gad) …
Those eager for a biopic on Bob Hope's long-suffering wife will have to settle for a documentary portrait of activist Dolores Huerta. But seriously folks, Huerta was a civil rights legend, a working-class wife and mother of eleven children who helped to establish a farmer's union, which later developed into …
For a film about identical-twin gynecologists who share a woman, David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers was awfully psychological. Conversely, for a film about identical-twin psychologists who share a woman, François Ozon’s latest is awfully gynecological. The film practically opens on a shot of a speculum-spread opening, and most of the drama …
Director and co-writer Alexander Payne gets Matt Damon to go full Everyman as Paul Safranek, a middle-aged, lower-middle-class white guy who’s rightly worried about the future: the world’s, sure, but mostly his own, which looks pretty bleak, at least by American Dream standards. When he starts hearing about the economic …
This plays as part of the 2017 San Diego International Film Festival. The program notes describe it as, "Down The Fence profiles horse trainers on their journey to compete for one of the most challenging equestrian championships in the world, documenting how cowboy culture has evolved and is thriving because …
Plays as part of the San Diego Asian Film Festival. Here's how the festival brochure describes the movie: "Thousands of hours of actual surveillance footage are edited into a sensational mystery about a woman in a convent who finds work and fame after she leaves the temple. Finding the eerie …