by Daniel Robert Epstein
It has been a long journey for Darren Aronofsky and his film, The Fountain. This venture has been over six years long but film fans can rejoice because The Fountain is finally being released. It is one of the most emotional and moving films (not just science fiction) I have ever seen. The Fountain is confusing at first but soon you are deeply involved in Tom [played by Hugh Jackman], the scientist/conquistador/space traveler’s journey to find his what he considers his soul.
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by Matt Dunbar
While the holiday season provides an endless bounty for Sinbad fans the world over, action movie nerds such as myself loathe the winter solstice and its attendant festivities. Despite the perfect Christmas-themed taglines for a Dolph Lundgren vehicle (“This Christmas, Earth has no time for peace…”), December usually means a dry spell for protracted car chases, overwrought explosions, and cheesy one-liners delivered with Central European accents.
Thankfully, there is one historical exception to this holiday action drought. Alongside George Bailey’s exuberant dash through Bedford Falls and Ralphie’s ill-fated target practice, nothing evokes the yule-tide spirit more than the sight of Alan Rickman’s flailing arms as he falls to his death off Nakatomi Towers. With due apologies to Lethal Weapon loyalists, the first Die Hard is the best Christmas movie to ever incorporate cocaine, automatic gunfire and lots of dead East Germans.
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by Alex Dueben
“She really was a manifestation of my inner thoughts”
– Jen Wang
Jen Wang first surfaced crafting short comics that appeared online and in the Flight anthologies, but her debut graphic novel Koko Be Good is the first work of hers that most people will have encountered. It’s a beautifully illustrated book that centers around three characters, each of whom is tackling, in their own way, what it means to be “good.”
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by Tamara Palmer
“Your trade secret is that you’re killing people?”
– Howard Straus
In the 1920s, Dr. Max Gerson developed the Gerson Therapy, a methodology of boosting the immune system largely led by an organic diet that has been at controversial odds with conventional medicine for decades — despite a difficult-to-ignore track record of helping people survive cancer and other terminal illnesses.
The Beautiful Truth is a documentary which explores this treatment regimen. It was directed and shot by Steve Kroschel, an accomplished wildlife cinematographer and natural history filmmaker. This is his third film about the Gerson Therapy, but this time his subject hits closer to home; Garret, the 15-year-old boy who serves as the film’s central figure, is Kroschel’s son.
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by Nicole Powers
“It’s an absolutely fucking crazy story.”
– Jaimie D’Cruz
Exit Through the Gift Shop is a film that defies explanation, and one’s ability to suspend disbelief. Indeed the plot would be utterly ridiculous, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s true.
It started out life as a simple documentary about street art as seen through the lens of Thierry Guetta, a French national living in Los Angeles. Thanks to a family connection, and his infectious and perpetuity ebullient personality, Guetta gained unparalleled access to the major players in the scene, who are a notoriously secretive and hard to track down bunch by necessity due to the predominantly illicit nature of their work. Guetta’s extreme enthusiasm for the form, and his zealous pursuit of its practitioners, ultimately led him to the scene’s holy grail, Banksy, an elusive British street art superstar.
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by Nicole Powers
It was very possible to lose one’s mind…playing Catherine,” says Mena Suvari, referring to her role in the film Hemingway’s Garden of Eden, which opens in select US theaters this month. Indeed the character at the heart of the Ernest Hemingway book, upon which the movie is based, is considered to be one of the writer’s most complex.
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by Fred Topel
“I guess Stephen Brill never saw Star Wars.”
– Kyle Newman
With the Star Wars saga officially wrapped up with Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, fans will seek out any remaining sliver of that galaxy far, far away on screen. The Clone Wars animated movie gave them a little bit of light drone lasering action, but what really caught their attention was Kyle Newman’s Fanboys.
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