The newest movie from Brett Haley (I’ll See You In My Dreams, The Hero) offers audiences an opportunity to explore the complications of modern life, especially through the lens of family dynamics, and ways that art — music in particular — can provide balms of consolation without needing to fix or solve situations. […]
I left this movie feeling like it was one of the most important, most beautiful and most inspiring pieces of art I had ever witnessed. […]
“American Animals”, starting a run today at FilmScene, stars Evan Peters of “American Horror Story,” Barry Keoghan of “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” Ann Dowd of “Hereditary”…And surprisingly enough, it’s not a horror movie. “Animals” is a crime drama, following a group of four college-age men looking to spice up their life by planning and executing an art heist at the library of Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.
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You have seen a version of this movie before, but American cinema in the summertime is nothing if not generous. If you need to step out from the pool for a few hours to watch Tag in air-conditioned comfort, then by all means do it. […]
“Can God forgive us for what we’ve done to this world?” That is the question which Michael, the radical environmental activist, poses to a disturbed pastor at the beginning of First Reformed. It is the question that haunts this small, brutally beautiful film, the latest from writer-director Paul Schrader, the cinema legend who penned the scripts for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull […]
It’s 25 minutes in before anyone in the film One October uses the word gentrification. But every shot, every beat of the film is infused with the specter of that term. Rachel Shuman’s 2017 documentary, showing tonight at FilmScene, is a narrow snapshot of a changing city, on its surface. […]
With “Tully,” a film still squarely in Diablo Cody’s wheelhouse, the University of Iowa alumna and 39-year-old mother of two drops (most of) the whimsy and tackles a special sense of fatigue and dissatisfaction. Think “Bad Moms” but with a lot more depression, breast pumping and literary references. […]
A Quiet Place, floating on a cloud of high praise and a big opening weekend, has perhaps been overinflated. Nevertheless, the suspense-thriller, penned by Iowan filmmakers, is deliciously unsettling. […]
If you’re like me, you’ve been nervous about the story of Caroline Found and the 2011 West High volleyball team being “Soul Surfer”-fied. But rest assured, the film holds up. Here are the highs, lows and uncanny bits about watching a very Iowa City story on the big screen. […]
Fans of chef-focused, “food porn” documentaries like Chef’s Table or Anthony Bourdain’s The Mind of a Chef will enjoy 42 Grams, a somewhat gritty documentary following a Chicago chef’s journey from underground food to a critically acclaimed restaurant. […]
FilmScene’s newest (and inevitably Oscar-nominated) featured film is full of Italian sunlight, adolescent longing and stellar chemistry. You’ll never look at peaches the same. […]
I, Tonya Film Scene — opens Friday, Jan. 12 For people of a certain age, the 1994 incident involving Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding and a premeditated attack on her team-rival Nancy Kerrigan has a permanent place in the memory banks. Many recall those events very clearly, as well as the drama that played out […]