In the opening scene of “The Suicide Squad,” an old man (Michael Rooker) with long gray hair bounces a handball around a prison yard. With superhuman strength, he chucks the ball at a sparrow that landed nearby, reducing it to a bloody stain on the concrete. Out walks Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), a higher-up at [...]
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Anthony Ramos as Usnavi and Mellissa Barrera as Vanessa in "In the Heights." (Warner Bros./Macall Polay) “In the Heights” is a film of contradictions. It is an ode to Washington Heights, the Manhattan neighborhood above 155th street, yet its characters struggle with the desire to break free from their home. It is both a celebration [...]
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The company Criterion Collection began restoring and rereleasing classic, art house and foreign films in 1984. Since then, the word “Criterion” has become synonymous with quality movies. The collection includes some of the greatest films ever made, from big-budget Hollywood classics such as “The Silence of the Lambs” to international art house masterpieces like “Portrait [...]
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There is a scene early on in Shaka King’s “Judas and the Black Messiah” during which Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), the chairman of Chicago’s Black Panther Party (BPP), teaches a roomful of initiates the pillars of Black Panther ideology, telling them to abandon the idea that liberation for oppressed people will come through reform. Instead, [...]
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“Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters,” the 1985 masterpiece by director and screenwriter Paul Schrader, documents the life of legendary Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima (Ken Ogata) and his obsessive quest to transform himself into a work of art, destroying himself in the process. While most biopics simply tell the story of their subjects’ lives from [...]
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