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The Independent Film Festival Boston trends to greatness

Cures for pain
If you had to find a common theme among the films in this year’s Independent Film Festival of Boston (recently honored in the Phoenix Best of Boston Poll as the Best Film Festival), you might say that there are a number of deranged old coots who turn out to be possessed by genius, as in Last Days Here and Heaven + Earth + Joe Davis

By: PETER KEOUGH | April 29, 2011

Two odd docs open the ninth Independent Film Festival of Boston

Independent lives
The Independent Film Festival of Boston — now in its ninth year, and the most exciting film event in town, if not in New England — opens this week with two outstanding documentaries about two very independent and inspiring individuals.

By: PETER KEOUGH | April 22, 2011

Duncan Jones on solving Source Code

Game plan
It's the elephant in the room when you're talking to Duncan Jones: this guy is Zowie Bowie, Ziggy Stardust's son. It's uncool to bring it up, but how can you not at least mention it?

By: PETER KEOUGH | March 31, 2011

Thomas McCarthy's game plan for Win Win

Putting up w's
As an actor, he usually plays the colorful minor character. Which might explain why when he's a director, Thomas McCarthy's movies feature leading roles that would be bit parts in any Hollywood picture.

By: PETER KEOUGH | March 25, 2011

Plain Jane

And all the better for it
And all the better for it

By: JEFFREY GANTZ | March 16, 2011

More buried treasures from Boston Underground Film Festival

Deep thrills
Audiences have grown jaded as the thrills have gotten cheap, generic, and superficial. But the Boston Underground Film Festival, now in its 13th year, remains a reliable source for the kind of jolts to the system the medium was meant to provide.

By: PETER KEOUGH | March 16, 2011

This is the season for unexpected greatness

Spring tryouts
Say what you will about cruelest months, but spring is a time of hope. It's a time when the dead revive, appearances deceive, expectations are reversed, and secret identities are revealed.

By: PETER KEOUGH | March 16, 2011

Jane Eyre redux

Cary Fukunaga and Mia Wasikowska hold forth
Jane Austen has been a movie and television icon for some time now, and yet the Jane that both big and small screens just can't get enough of is the "poor, obscure, plain, little" heroine of Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel.

By: JEFFREY GANTZ | March 18, 2011

Blood will out in the Chabrol tribute at Harvard Film Archive

Dead reckoning
Like Eric Rohmer, the fellow New Wave founder with whom he collaborated on the Alfred Hitchcock study that helped launch the auteur theory, Claude Chabrol made films about people who like to talk. They talk about frustrated desires, bungled liaisons, bourgeois pleasures and vices. But one significant difference between the two filmmakers is that with Chabrol, more often than not, the discussions are resolved by murder.

By: PETER KEOUGH | March 10, 2011

Photos: Oscars Party at Brattle Theatre

Brattle Theatre | Oscars Party | February 27, 2011
Photos from Brattle Theatre's Oscars night pre-party fundraiser and viewing party.

By: DEREK KOUYOUMJIAN | February 28, 2011

The Forgotten Oscars 2011

A slew of genre films that hold a special place in our hearts -- but not in the Academy's
It's Oscar time again, and, as usual, the Academy is trotting out the same old bullshit.

By: MICHAEL NEEL | February 28, 2011

Complete 2011 Oscars coverage

Predictions, reviews, quizzes, and a live chat on Oscar Night
Will The King's Speech silence the competition? Did Salt REALLY got nominated for an Academy Award? Join us for Oscar punditry aplenty!

By: PHOENIX STAFF | February 25, 2011

The phantom worlds of Nina Menkes

Uninvited
A woman croupier drifts like a ghost through languidly lit hotel spaces, or submits to jackhammer missionary intercourse while an I'm-not-here expression hardens her turned-away face.

By: CHRIS FUJIWARA | February 22, 2011

Tom Hooper's film looks like an Oscar winner

Speech impediments?
Given the change in political attitudes after the election of Barack Obama, a reactionary backlash following last year's progressive Oscars - in which Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director - might be no surprise. But who knew the Academy would get this fuddy-duddy?

By: PETER KEOUGH | February 25, 2011

Sara Nesson gets an Oscar nod for 'Poster Girl'

Casualty of war
In the Bible, they beat swords into plowshares. On Martha's Vineyard on July 21, 2008, about two dozen Iraq War vets recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder shredded their old uniforms into paper and turned them into works of art. Sara Nesson, a filmmaker with local roots (she's the stepdaughter of tire magnate Barry Steinberg), had helped organize the event, which was called the Combat Papers Project.

By: PETER KEOUGH | February 18, 2011

Among the Oscar shorts, documentaries take the prize

Truth is better than fiction.
The winter blahs are over. The first great cinema treat of 2011: the five surprisingly superb documentary shorts vying for an Academy Award, opening this Friday as "2011 Documentary Oscar Shorts" at the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

By: GERALD PEARY | February 24, 2011

Love might be awarded at this year's Sundance Festival, but anger holds sway

Hope and fury
When you step back from Sundance 2011 and its 110 films that hit the dozen screens over the 10 days ending January 30, what you come away with is the year of Angry Men.

By: HARLAN JACOBSON | February 02, 2011

Oscar nominee predictions 2011: Social anxiety

Oscar looks back, turns inward
Last year's Oscar program had a celebratory feeling about it that's not always associated with the most watched ceremony in the world.

By: PETER KEOUGH | February 24, 2011

Panahi is silenced, but the Festival of Films from Iran goes on

Persian Gulf
In an episode in Mohammad Rasoulof's weird and wonderful The White Meadows - one of the best entries in this year's Boston Festival of Films from Iran, at the Museum of Fine Arts - an artist is buried up to his neck in salt for painting the sea red.

By: PETER KEOUGH | January 11, 2011

Interview: Sofia Coppola provides direction to Somewhere

Suite surrender
Six years before Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director, Sofia Coppola was the third to be so nominated, for Lost in Translation .

By: PETER KEOUGH | January 04, 2011

2011 film preview: 25 films Mike Leigh didn't direct (plus one that he did)

The movies chill out to start the year
So, it's time for Another Year , meaning not just 2011 but also the latest film from Happy-Go-Lucky director Mike Leigh, a traipse through four seasons in the lives of ordinary people, exploring their small joys and tragedies. Kind of like Blue Valentine , but with no oral sex.

By: PETER KEOUGH | December 29, 2010

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