The Edge of Heaven (Auf der anderen Seite) Directed by Fatih Akin October 3-5, Bijou There is an old poem by Horace that celebrates simple country living; its surprise ending is that the whole thing turns out to be the pitch of a city dweller trying to sell some rural property. During the Olympics, there […]
Scott Samuelson
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50 Years of Obsession With Vertigo
Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is celebrating this fall its 50th anniversary as an object of obsession for movie lovers. This year also marks the less-auspicious 15th anniversary of when I became obsessed with it in the commons room of a college dorm. Though I squirmed right off the filthy couch at the final scene, when a […]
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Landlocked Film Festival
Editor’s Note: A summer full of festivals winds down this week with the second annual Landlocked Film Festival. This year, Iowa City’s umbrella organization Summer of the Arts wove Landlocked into the fold, giving the fledgling festival a bigger profile than last year’s inaugural event. In our August issue, we previewed two Iowa Film Festivals, […]
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This American Gothic Movie Review
This American Gothic Documentary, 63 min Directed by Sasha Waters Freyer Hardacre: Saturday, August 2, 1:25pm; Landlocked: Friday, August 22, 5:30pm In the director’s statement for This American Gothic—a documentary about Grant Wood’s painting and the people of Eldon, Iowa, where the austere house with the lavish window still stands—Sasha Waters Freyer says that she […]
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Pond Hockey Movie Review
Pond Hockey Documentary, 79 min Directed by Tommy Haines Landlocked: Saturday, August 23, 3:00pm Pond Hockey is a documentary no hockey fan should miss. But it would be a shame if only hockey fans were to see it, because, like all good sports movies, it’s about the forces that nurture and threaten what truly brings […]
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Fix Movie Review
Fix Narrative, 90 min Directed by Tao Ruspoli Hardacre: Friday, August 1, 9pm It’s a pleasure to stand on a cliff, a Roman poet once observed, and watch a ship wreck. Leo, the central character in Tao Ruspoli’s Fix, a heroin addict who by law must either go to rehab or jail, says that his […]
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Loneliest Place on Earth Movie Review
The Loneliest Place on Earth Short Film, 13 min Directed by Cody Stokes Hardacre: Friday, August 1, 8:40pm In Cody Stokes’s The Loneliest Place on Earth, which has the elegance and mystery of a parable, a man is stabbed in a St. Louis alley. He doesn’t want to go to the hospital for fear of […]
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Moonboy Movie Review
Moonboy Short Film Directed by Adam Calfee Hardacre: Friday, August 1, 6:20 Adam Calfee’s Moonboy is an animated short about a kid, a kind of everyman, who, as his apathetic mother smokes in the dirty kitchen, flips endlessly through the channels, which show an endless catalogue of things to be depressed and then apathetic about. […]
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Surfwise Movie Review
Surfwise Documentary, 93 min Directed by Doug Pray The floods have got me thinking about water: the great life-giver, the great destroyer. Lao Tzu, the founding Taoist, says that we should emulate water over rock; for the softness of water, which yields infinitely to anything in its path, eventually overcomes and destroys the hardest stone. […]
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Twisted: A Balloonamentary Movie Review
Twisted: A Balloonamentary Documentary, 79 min Directed by Naomi Greenfield and Sara Taksler How much does the best-paid poet in the world make? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it’s a lot less than one woman in Twisted: A Balloonamentary, who declares that she took in $1.5 million last year for twisting balloons into […]
