Anime Feature Film Review – Ponyo (2009)
by HELEN GEIB
Ponyo, the title character of writer-director Hayao Miyazaki’s latest animated feature, is an inquisitive goldfish who decides she wants to be human after bonding with a young boy named Sosuke who rescued her from a glass bottle. Little Ponyo is a magical being, the progeny of a once-human wizard of the sea and an elemental ocean-mother goddess. She transforms herself into a girl of Sosuke’s age and leaves her home in the sea to live with him on land. Read more 
Thinking Outside the Multiplex
by MIKE MACCOLLUM
The Keystone Arts gets one new limited release film this week, and it doesn’t look like a winner – while the new Indian film at the Georgetown 14 this week apparently doesn’t have English subtitles. At least there are some other interesting titles being shown in theaters and elsewhere around the city and state this week. For more on those films – and a complete listing of limited release films opening around the country – read on below…. Read more
Movie Review – Kitchen Stories (2003)
by HELEN GEIB
Kitchen Stories is an improbably entertaining film about a friendship that arises out of a household efficiency study of Norwegian bachelor farmers. Read more
Movie Review – Inglourious Basterds (2009)
by NIR SHALEV
“Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France…” is the appropriate opening title for Quentin Tarantino’s World War II fable Inglourious Basterds. While very loosely based on the Italian film Inglorious Bastards (1978), this film takes a completely different path than its predecessor due to Tarantino’s flair for neat back-and-forth dialogue, scenes of unrelenting tension, and good ol’ Nazi scalping. Read more
DVD of the Week – Review of Duplicity (2009)
by HELEN GEIB
This week’s DVD pick is a movie that I enjoyed enough to recommend, but not enough to recommend without qualifications. Duplicity was written and directed by Tony Gilroy in follow-up to the superior Michael Clayton. Gilroy’s other principal credit is as the screenwriter of the “Bourne” trilogy. Duplicity is considerably lighter in tone than those earlier films, but like them is preoccupied with deception; in particular, the way people who live by deceiving others, and themselves, are warped by it. Read more
Movie Review – Shorts (2009)
by HELEN GEIB
Writer-director Robert Rodriguez’s latest family film Shorts does nothing to change my long-held opinion that Rodriguez is a much better director than he is a writer. Read more
Movie Review – District 9 (2009)
by NIR SHALEV
What can I say that has not already been said about District 9? This film is truly magnificent in its scope, vision, messages, and overall energy. Read more
Thinking Outside the Multiplex
by MIKE MACCOLLUM
Adam and Paper Heart hope to repeat the (relative) box office success of thematically similar (500) Days of Summer, while a full slate of Indian films plays the Georgetown 14. For more on these and other films opening in Indianapolis and around Indiana this week – and a complete listing of limited release films opening around the country – read on… Read more
Silent Reflections – Three Ages (1923)
by HELEN GEIB
The still accompanying this post is of Buster Keaton, Margaret Leahy, and Wallace Beery in the Stone Age segment of Three Ages. The Stone Age precedes the Roman Age and the Modern Age in Keaton’s comic survey of love through the ages. Read more
DVD of the Week – Disc Commentary Track for The Roaring Twenties (1939)
by NIR SHALEV
The Roaring Twenties is a classic and expertly made gangster film from the great director Raoul Walsh (High Sierra, White Heat). Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney), George Hally (Humphrey Bogart), and Lloyd Hart (Jeffrey Lynn) are three American soldiers during WWI who become friends. Once the war is over and each goes his separate way, Eddie finds out what had happened to his country during the past couple of years. His buddy finds him a job driving his cab part time for a while, but then he begins a lucrative career in bootlegging during Prohibition. Read more