Film Preview

MELANCHOLIA. Never one to shy away from mischief, director Lars Von Trier feels that “a film should be like a rock in the shoe.” Uneasiness plays a large role in most of his films: Breaking The Waves, Dancer In The Dark, Dogville and The Idiots are full of characters driven to insanity and forced to […]

On April 10, 1912, the ocean liner RMS Titanic set sail on her maiden voyage. Five days later, the ship struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and foundered. Out of 2,200 passengers, 1,517 died in the icy waters. To mark the 100th anniversary of this maritime disaster, the very successful James Cameron film Titanic […]

As the film opens, the camera pans through a bucolic redwood forest, tilting up into the branches. Bird sounds and new age music on the soundtrack are interrupted by a Bay Area TV news report announcing, “A car bomb explosion sends two members of the activist group Earth First! to the hospital. And the question […]

Many of this year’s Oscar nominated films did not play in local theaters. Here are a few that are already out on DVD: If A Tree Falls: A Story of Earth Liberation Front (Best Documentary Feature) How often do we get to see footage from Eureka in an Oscar nominated film? (Perhaps the 1997 pepper […]

The making of the excellent documentary, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, an artfully edited collage of unearthed archival film footage, came by accident. “There was a rumor around for years among filmmakers that Sweden had more archive material on the Black Panthers than the entire USA,” said Göran Olsson, the film’s director, interviewed in the […]

TGIF. I’m particularly thankful this Friday since it happens to be the fourth one of the month. That’s because of Fourth Friday Flicks, the monthly movie event at the Westhaven Center for the Arts (WCA). John Webb organizes the series, which runs for most of the year. (It took a break in November and December, […]

Living behind the Redwood Curtain often means missing out on the majority of independent theatrical releases. With that in mind, we look back at a few overlooked 2011 films now available on DVD. Submarine. On the light and fluffy side we have a Welsh crowd-pleaser directed by Britcom star Richard Ayoade. Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts) […]

It’s good to know there are people like Bill Cunningham in the world. He’s happy. He’s kind and sincere. He has built a life doing what he loves and is acknowledged internationally for it. Richard Press’ charming and emotive documentary, Bill Cunningham New York, is a beautiful portrait of this curious photographer and a passing […]

The hand-drawn map of southern Oregon that opens the new Kelly Reichardt film is subtly foreboding and apt. Reichardt, best known for smaller independent films set in the Northwest, such as Wendy and Lucy and Old Joy, has stepped up production values with her exceptional period work, Meek’s Cutoff. The film, availalbe on DVD, focuses […]

Somehow this became Hitchcock month in Humboldt. In mid-October, Ferndale Repertory Theatre opens The 39 Steps, a fast-paced farce based on a film Hitchcock made twice (details on that elsewhere in this paper). And all month long the Eureka branch of the Humboldt County Library presents Master of Suspense: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock as […]

“James Hillman is an artist of psychology,” wrote Thomas Moore, introducing his selection of Hillman’s writings, A Blue Fire. As director of studies at the Jung Institute and in his articles and books from the 1960s through the ’80s, Hillman became the most prominent American interpreter of Carl G. Jung, as well as an original […]

Humboldt County Library’s based-on-the-book film series for July is titled “Baby, I Don’t Care: The Films of Robert Mitchum.” The four film run actually started last Tuesday with Mitchum in creepy mode as the villain Max Cady in Cape Fear. The screening Tuesday, July 12, hosted by Journal film critic Charlie Myers has another dark […]