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Thanksgiving, no longer one day a year

Thanksgiving's is just like home after the holiday
There are the moments when the solitary life is unbearable, but Thanksgiving is not one of them. No matter how distant you have grown from family or friends, you find a home to arrive at with a dish in hand.

By: BRIAN DUFF | November 26, 2008

Winners of the Short Film Festival

Our third short-film festival crowns all new winners
A new crop of local entrants, including a professional filmmaker, won awards at the third annual Portland Phoenix Maine Short Film Festival, which turned out to be the most competitive ever ... and the most fun!

By: JEFF INGLIS | November 21, 2008

Kaufman on misogyny, stool-samples

Straight poop
People either love or hate Charlie Kaufman.

By: PETER KEOUGH | November 04, 2008

Knee Deep in murder

Michael Chandler on his documentary, Knee Deep
Michael Chandler’s documentary, Knee Deep is less a whodunit than a who-wouldn’t-have-done-it.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | October 29, 2008

Putting up W’s

Screen depictions beat around the Bush
How is it that the least popular and possibly worst chief executive in American history has inspired no lasting impersonations?

By: PETER KEOUGH | October 15, 2008

Paul Newman (1925-2008)

Remembering a movie star who turned himself into a great actor
Paul Newman, who died last weekend at the age of 83, was that rarest of creatures, a movie star who turned himself into a great actor.

By: STEVE VINEBERG | October 01, 2008

Interview: Simon Pegg

Shaun of the Dead star on losing friends, alienating people, and wanking off to Gillian Anderson
Thirty-eight-year-old British actor Simon Pegg’s US star has been on the rise since his zombie-movie parody Shaun of the Dead shuffled into multiplexes back in 2004.

By: BRETT MICHEL | October 01, 2008

Movies on the Midcoast

From simulated battlegrounds to Bristol Bay at the Camden International Film Festival
Yet again, this year’s festival tackles an admirable hodgepodge of subjects — online gaming junkies, Harry Potter fanatics, and even Cockney gangsters in London’s East End.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | September 24, 2008

Autumn peeves

Films with a full agenda
With pundits already reading political significance into summer blockbusters like The Dark Knight (“Is Batman a stand-in for George Bush? Discuss.”), the meatier movies of fall arrive not a moment too soon.

By: PETER KEOUGH | September 11, 2008

Two days, a theme, and a prop

Overnight developing
If you see a bunch of people running around town this weekend singing and dancing, John Wayne style, you can bet they drew “Musical or Western” as their 48 Hour Film Project genre.

By: DEIRDRE FULTON | August 13, 2008

Flying high

Is The Dark Knight the best movie ever?
Every summer, it seems like another superhero movie has broken some box-office record or other and made movie history.

By: PETER KEOUGH | July 23, 2008

Our superheroes, ourselves

What the current crop of comic-book action movies tells us about America's identity crisis
Is there a breed of person more tenderly optimistic, more winsomely hopeful for the best, more loyal to the possibility of good, than the American summer moviegoer?

By: JAMES PARKER | July 09, 2008

The ultimate balancing act

An extraordinary documentary opens the 2008 Maine International Film Festival
About 100 films deep, MIFF ’08 has intriguing offerings for cineastes of all stripes. Here’s a slice of what to look out for.

By: CHRISTOPHER GRAY | July 09, 2008

Photo op?

In Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure , a picture is worth a thousand words
After 11 days on the road promoting Standard Operating Procedure , his film about the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal, Errol Morris is back in his Cambridge office.

By: PETER KEOUGH | May 01, 2008