Pirate Radio tepidly looks back at broadcast rebels Rock 'n' roll ahoy Marjorie Baumgarten on Friday 11/13/2009 Despite a title change from The Boat That Rocked to Pirate Radio, this British import exudes about as much outlaw swagger as Tom DeLay in a dance competition. Forget about historical veracity. The film's offshore radio broadcasting ship Radio Rock is a fictional stand-in for the actual operation Radio Caroline, which was shut down by the British government in 1967. >More2012: Cinematic catharsis Marc Savlov on Friday 11/13/2009 Life is simple in Roland Emmerich's films. Confronted with unprecedented perils on a scale never before seen, the characters in his disaster epics manage to reaffirm their broken loves, make amends for slipshod parenting and, most impressively, outrun fireballs and certain death with their hides and wits intact. >More
The Men Who Stare at Goats: Psychic spies Psychic spies Kimberley Jones on Friday 11/06/2009 The Men Who Stare at Goats is one odd duck. A title card reads "More of this is true than you would believe," but it's impossible to tell what's factual in this fictionalized take on Jon Ronson's book about Army experiments in the paranormal because it all sounds so deeply ludicrous. >MoreAn elegy for Michael Jackson in This Is It Strange film is a fitting farewell Marjorie Baumgarten on Friday 10/30/2009, (1) Recommendation Ever see a dream moonwalking? Well, I did. Michael Jackson's posthumously released film about the preparations for his 50-concert comeback extravaganza is a strange creature indeed. >More
Where the Wild Things Are not The movie adaptation lacks the book's mythic power Kenneth Burns on Friday 10/16/2009 Like any good myth, Where the Wild Things Are has lessons to teach, but also ambiguities. To his credit, director Spike Jonze retains ambiguities in his film version, which he wrote with Gen-X literary icon Dave Eggers. But given the book's austerity, the film has quite a few gaps to fill, even at a brief hour and 34 minutes. >MoreThe Informant!: Exclamation point Marjorie Baumgarten on Friday 09/18/2009 Although The Informant!'s screenplay is based on Kurt Eichenwald's book of the same name, the movie's addition of an exclamation point to its title is revealing. >More
Public Enemies extras from Madison finally see their movie Amelia Cook on Wednesday 07/08/2009 3:00 pm, (6) Recommendations On July 1, I saw Public Enemies at the Columbus Downtown Development Corporation's premiere, held at Eastgate Cinemas in Madison. The auditorium was filled with busloads of people who'd made the trip from Columbus to see their neighbors, their main street, and -- just maybe -- themselves on the silver screen. >MoreCrime wave and heat wave collide: Madison in the era of Public Enemies A look back at life in the city during the summer of 1934 David Medaris on Thursday 07/02/2009 10:00 am, (9) Recommendations In 1934, as the feds were closing in on John Dillinger and other gangsters, Madison was a small capital city in the grip of a spring drought and a summer heat wave. >More
Wilmington on DVD: Gone With the Wind, The Exiles, Star Trek, My Sister's Keeper Mike Wilmington on Wednesday 11/18/2009 10:00 am Like the flawed but spectacular Margaret Mitchell novel from which it derives, the movie Gone With the Wind has never lost its power to enthrall and bewitch. Producer David O. Selznick's phenomenal film, can still, like Mitchell's saucy and unconquerable heroine, Scarlett O'Hara, seduce or bulldoze almost all before it. >MoreWilmington on DVD: Up, Wings of Desire, holiday classics, The Ugly Truth, Mamma Mia! Mike Wilmington on Wednesday 11/11/2009 10:00 am Up flies us right up into those magical realms of sky, flight and fantasy that Judy garland's Dorothy traveled, in her Kansas twister ride to Oz, and that little Pascal Lamorisse was whisked off to by his air force of Parisian balloons at the end of The Red Balloon. >MoreWilmington on DVD: North by Northwest, Food, Inc., noir classics, The Taking of Pelham 123 Mike Wilmington on Wednesday 11/04/2009 10:00 am North by Northwest is Alfred Hitchcock's great romantic/comedy/thriller -- with Cary Grant at his witty, seductive, impeccable best as "wrong man" Roger Thornhill, an overly smug Madison Avenue adman who gets mistaken for an elusive spy. >MoreWilmington on DVD: Il Divo, Z, Sam Fuller, Ice Age 3, Whatever Works, Orphan Mike Wilmington on Wednesday 10/28/2009 10:00 am, (1) Recommendation Veteran Italian actor Toni Servillo's craggy wise-hood face -- as impassive and immobile as a dentist staring into your mouth or a panther regarding its prey -- is at the center of a jaw-dropping whirlpool of bloody events and political crime, portrayed or exposed in Il Divo, subtitled The Extraordinary Life of Giulio Andreotti. >MoreTales from Planet Earth 2009 film fest returns with broad community ambitions David Medaris on Tuesday 10/27/2009 2:23 pm, (6) Recommendations This year's expanded edition of Tales from Planet Earth represents a significant leap in ambition. Driven by the strong attendance of two years ago, plans for the 2009 festival have grown to set almost double the number of films on a cornerstone theme of "Justice." Tales 2 also engages in close partnerships with nine community organizations. >MoreWilmington on DVD: Monsoon Wedding, Dusan Makavejev, Transformers 2, Cheri Mike Wilmington on Wednesday 10/21/2009 10:00 am Monsoon Wedding, Mira Nair's joyous movie about a wedding in Delhi -- constantly disrupted by family squabbles, sudden crises, covert romantic interludes, cultural clashes among the guests, dark buried secrets erupting to the surface and finally, a full-blown monsoon rainfall, not to mention a musical climax that outdoes Bollywood -- is both her most popular film and her best. >More
'The War at Home,' Part 2 After years as an Emmy-winning TV producer, former Madison filmmaker David Medaris on Friday 10/23/2009, (1) Recommendation Almost three decades after leaving Madison to chase his ambitions, Glenn Silber returns this week for a 30th anniversary screening of The War at Home and the world premiere of his new documentary, Labor Day. The film represents a return to the progressive roots Silber put down in Madison as a UW student and to his independence as a filmmaker. >MoreMeet me in the Cinematheque: A Fall 2009 preview Kenneth Burns on Friday 09/04/2009 I'm sad summer is ending, but crisp weather also portends the fall's entertainment options. Among them is the new calendar of free films at UW's Cinematheque. It starts Friday and offers weekend screenings at Vilas Hall through December. Did I mention it's free? >More
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