On Tuesday, February 25, Bucha will be screened at The Byrd Theatre, presented by FREEDOM | Ukrainian Community and the Leonid Foundation, immersing Richmond in a reality most Americans only know from news headlines. But this isn’t just a film screening—it’s an urgent...
"Sometimes I’m working on a film and someone will ask me if I’m having fun. And I’m tempted to tell them the truth: No, absolutely not. Having no fun here at all. You know what’s going to be fun? When it’s done, and I’ve done a fuckin’ good job, and I know people are getting something out of that. I’ll have a lot of fun then. A ton of it.” The...
“We don’t need a leader. We need a conscience.”-Ahmed Hassan Before watching The Square, I had little to no knowledge of the events of the revolution in Egypt over the last few years. I was shocked, and admittedly disappointed in myself, for not even being semi-conscious about the suffering, the fighting, the deaths, and the measures Egypt’s...
Honesty is a difficult thing to come by in the real world. It’s even harder to find in relationships. And once it’s found, it requires more than enough from the people involved to maintain. Director Cameron Crowe’s 1989 film Say Anything shows audiences young and old the value of honesty in any loving relationship. Say Anything is a brilliant...
Director Jim Jarmusch has given us many amazing films over the course of his career. His contributions to cinema have been paramount since the 1980s. Jarmusch’s most expensive film to date, and perhaps his most enigmatic, is the 1995 independent film Dead Man. Dead Man stars Johnny Depp, John Hurt, Billy Bob Thornton, Alfred Molina, Iggy Pop,...
Last year, a documentary shattered the bright and shiny illusion that aquatic theme parks, specifically Sea World, have given us over time. This documentary illustrates in alarming detail aspects of life at Sea World, as well as other aquatic theme parks, which kidnap killer whale cubs from their family pods and raise them in captivity for the...
Every Christmas holiday, we as a society are saturated with TV and film specials made in the spirit of celebrating the season. The excitement is so great that it takes over both November and December. After two months of non-stop Christmas cheer, it makes Christmas slightly anti-climactic. This is the reason why BBC’s Blackadder’s Christmas Carol...
Anthology is one of the most entertaining and unique formats in film today. An anthology can be described as one film made up of many shorter plot lines with many different characters that sometimes cross paths. The point of the film is generally an abstract idea or an elemental focus rather than the achievement of any specific overall plot or...
This week’s film takes us back to the year 1914 and the start of World War I. John Huston’s 1951 adaptation of C.S. Forrester’s novel of the same title, The African Queen, is truly a vibrant look at cinema when Technicolor production was on the rise. The audience can really see the film's stars, Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, as well as...
If you are a fan of animation or of quirky gothic films, it’s more than likely that you're familiar with the works of Tim Burton. However, this time of year always calls to mind one of his most outstanding cinematic achievements. In today's society, The Nightmare Before Christmas seems jarringly prophetic of the current commercial standard, in...
