Click here to listen to the interview. The annual interview with Head Berry, John Wilson, founder of the Golden Raspberry Awards Foundation, is one of the high points of my year. Now celebrating its 40th year of giving bad films what they deserve, the Razzies will mark the occasion by taping its ceremony for later broadcast. If you’ve… Read More »
HALE COUNTY: THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING — RaMell Ross Interview
Click here to listen to the interview. RaMell Ross’ extraordinary documentary, HALE COUNTY, THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING is both a deeply moving examination of seemingly ordinary African-American people living in a small town in Alabama, and an accessible example of experimental filmmaking at its most aesthetically assured. When I spoke with Ross on November 23,… Read More »
THE SALESMAN — Asghar Farhadi
When I spoke with Asghar Farhadi during the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 14, 2016 about THE SALESMAN, one of us (me) fully anticipated that it, like his Oscar™-winning film A SEPARATION, would be nominated for an Oscar™. Neither of us could have anticipated that when it was, in fact, nominated, Farhadi would not… Read More »
NO MAN’S LAND
NO MAN’S LAND, Danis Tanovic’s black comedy about the absurd futility of war, is a prime example of why I adore films from the former Yugoslavia and have since before it was a former. They are like a knife to the gut, they are beautiful, and they are poetic with their shattering intensity. They are… Read More »
Berry, Halle – MONSTER’S BALL
Few performances have blown me away the way Halle Berry’s did in MONSTER’S BALL. As Leticia Musgrove, the tormented widow of an executed felon unwittingly involved with one of the prison guards who oversaw the execution, she fights inner demons with exquisitly calibrated, raw emotions that show both her character’s toughness and vulnerability. I spoke… Read More »
Jim Rash & Nat Faxon Occupy THE WAY WAY BACK
Nat Faxon and Jim Rash have made a name for themselves in front of the camera by being funny Faxon on Fox’s “Ben and Kate, and Rash as the sartorially terrifying Dean Pelton on NBCs “Community. No surprise there, considering that they are both veterans of the L.A.-based improv troop, The Groundlings, where they began… Read More »