Category: entertainment
-
Pink Ribbons, Inc.
Raising money to fight breast cancer is a big business, the subject of Pink Ribbons, Inc., a documentary we saw Sunday afternoon at the Orpheum. The film explores the many ways that the Komen organization raises money for breast cancer research, and the effects it has had on the culture of breast cancer victims in… Read.
-
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Jiro Dreams of Shusi, the movie we saw Saturday night at the Orpheum, is one of the most sublime documentaries I have ever watched. It’s about Jiro, a master of sushi-making whose reputation is so great that people come from all over to eat in his restaurant in a subway station in Tokyo. You must… Read.
-
Elena
The last movie we saw at the Wisconsin Film Festival was the very Russian film Elena. How Russian? In the first scene, the sun rises behind the curtained windows of an upscale house, as viewed through the limbs of a leafless tree. The sun hasn’t risen at the beginning of the scene, in which the… Read.
-
Ecstasy of Order
Have you ever played Tetris, the video game where you have to stack blocks of different shapes that come falling from the top of the screen? The game appeared first in the early 1980s and has been around ever since, but the first national competition of Tetris players to find a champion didn’t take place… Read.
-
Tomboy
A young girl, Laure, and her family move into a new neighborhood. When she goes out to play and make friends with the neighborhood kids, they mistake her for a boy. Instead of correcting them, she decides to go along with it, telling them her name is Michael. That’s the premise of Tomboy, the movie… Read.
-
The Intouchables
My Darling B and I stood in line for rush tickets for an hour, hoping to snag a couple tickets to see The Intouchables. It was the first time we’ve rushed a movie, but this was one of our first picks, and we had tickets reserved until The Great Ticket Snafu of 2012 knocked them… Read.
-
Compliance
Compliance is probably one of the most effective dramatizations of real events I have ever seen, precisely because, as I was watching, it was so hard to believe it was based on real events, or ever could be. It baffled me that anybody, anywhere could be so ignorant of their personal rights, or could cave… Read.
-
The Entertainers
Oh thank goodness there are documentaries like The Entertainers, the best film we saw all day, and I’m not alone in saying that. It was one of those rare films that has scenes so enjoyable that the audience applauds for them, and people walk out gushing about their favorite. In ninety minutes, the film tells… Read.
-
Margaret
Allison Janney is one of my favorite actors. I’ve seen her in Juno, Ten Things I Hate About You and American Beauty, among a few other movies, but she’s probably still best known for playing the part of CJ Cregg in the television series The West Wing. Janney enters an early scene in Margaret dragging… Read.
-
We’re Not Broke
We’re Not Broke is a mess of a documentary. I can’t figure out which one of several stories the film’s makers are trying to tell: Multinational corporations don’t pay income taxes, or; multinational corporations are corrupting politics, or; grass-roots organizations are reigning in the corruption of government by multinational corporations. I think that last one… Read.
This Is Drivel 