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Kitty Green’s The Assistant is currently playing at FilmScene on the Ped Mall for the next two weeks. Papercuts are not the only wounds that sear in Green’s masterful and mesmerizing feature film The Assistant (2020). Some hurts are untraceable, undetectable on the surface of one’s skin. While the industrial revolution altered the domestic sphere’s […]
“You will believe,” promised the first trailer for Tom Hooper’s Cats, the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical, itself adapted from T.S. Eliot’s collection of poems Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. There was something ominous, perhaps even mildly threatening about this tagline. What will we believe? That the strangest Broadway hit of all time would make a good movie? […]
On Monday, Feb. 17 at 6 p.m., FilmScene at the Ped Mall will screen Sonja Strathearn’s feature film Last Chance Tango (2019) as part of their Filmmaker Spotlight series. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Strathearn. More information about the film and her work can be found at her website. A photograph. […]
All of Hollywood is nursing a hangover, so you know what that means: It’s the Monday after the Academy Awards! After a disappointing 2019 Oscars (including a Best Picture winner that was more than a little controversial) and a slate of 2020 nominees rife with snubs, cinephiles’ were tempered last night […]
Perhaps more than any of the other 23 categories, the Oscar-nominated Animated Shorts come with the promise of fresh, risk-taking perspectives. The medium of animation is truly limitless, and for being so constrained within the mainstream, there is something liberating to view the artistic shorts explore, push and reinvent themselves for the betterment of their own narratives. […]
The Oscar-nominated Live Action Shorts program as a whole, though the most uneven of the three Shorts categories, is a winner. A meditation on danger, safety and choices, it presents itself to the viewer only occasionally with judgement. The strongest argument for the short film format is right here in front of us within this programming. […]
This year’s slate for Best Documentary Shorts provides insight into the world’s desperate need for justice and the hope it drags behind it. Is that too bleak? Too cynical? Would you prefer hope to be leading rather than limp and full of grass stains? So do the five films nominated this year. They urge us to embrace hope of any kind, even if it’s reactionary. […]
Nathan rushes Theresa to the hospital, leaving their children at home to fend for themselves. But the television is all static. The cell phone signals are scrambled. Time is incongruous, no longer adhering to linearity or logic. Something sinister is brewing … […]
I want to gush about Parasite, which opens at FilmScene—The Chauncey today, but it’s one of those movies where the less you know going in, the better. Still, while you’re here, I think there are a few things I can say about Bong Joon-ho’s latest masterpiece that will, hopefully, entice you to go see it without diminishing that experience for you. […]
Regarded as one of the most important documentarians of the last couple decades, Alex Gibney has focused his camera on con-artists and fallen heroes in films such as The Armstrong Lie, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. His 2007 doc Taxi to the Dark Side […]
Nazis are bad, right? Right. Taiki Waititi assumes you already understand this if you’re sitting down to watch his latest film, Jojo Rabbit. If you know anything about this movie, it’s that it’s about a kid who has Adolf Hitler as an imaginary friend. Maybe you even heard that it’s directed by the Thor: Ragnarok guy. Oh, and it’s divisive as hell. […]
On Saturday, Nov. 2 at the Chauncey, FilmScene will award renowned director and screenwriter Charles Burnett with the prestigious Iowa City 2019 Cinema Savant award. The event will be followed by a reception honoring Burnett and his oeuvre. […]
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Little Village is an independent media company based in Iowa City. In print since 2001, our mission is to create visibility for the communities, businesses and events that define our region.