One of the Triangle’s annual rites of spring is the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the largest documentary-only showcase in the United States. The curtains rise in and around Durham’s Carolina Theatre on Thursday, April 6 for the festival’s ninth edition, featuring four days of over 100 films in competition and as part of their […]
Neil Morris
Posted inFilm & Television
Beautiful and the beast
Peter Jackson has waited all his life for a chance to remake King Kong, but his challenge is how to make his new version matter. Gone is the relevancy of the 1933 Kong as a skeptical assessment of the New Deal, with the adventurer-promoter Carl Denham as an FDR stand-in laying the groundwork to unchain […]
Posted inNews
Movie Spotlight
The Harry Potter films occupy a peculiar place in cinematic lore. It is quite rare for a wildly successful film series (which Harry Potter undoubtedly is, in terms of box office receipts and fan base) to not eclipse or even enhance its source material. As revered as Mario Puzo’s Godfather, Ian Fleming’s James Bond, and […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Like the virgin
No movie title so far this year divulges its subject matter and personality more than The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Coupled with the kitschy yearbook-style photo gracing the film’s ad poster, a prospective viewer might reasonably expect to see a biting, even mean-spirited comedy about a nerd wedded to a figment of adolescence, and his adult-age misadventures […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Marred attacks!
The alien invasion films of Steven Spielberg’s early career, 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1982’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, were the product of the post-counterculture, post-Vietnam era. If films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Thing From Another World reflected the Cold War Soviet paranoia of their times Spielberg’s represented the […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Batville
The common thread that runs through Christopher Nolan’s short but already illustrious directorial career is his focus on protagonists with battered psyches. Often plagued by the tragic death of a loved one, the anti-heroes of Nolan’s earlier films embark on tortuous and destructive journeys toward self-redemption. Consider Leonard Shelby in Memento–which, along with Darren Aronofsky’s […]
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Star Wars is Dead, Long Live Star Wars
Spurred by an Internet campaign, 390,000 people who responded to the 2001 British Census claimed their religious affiliation to be “Jedi Knight,” ranking it fifth after Christian, None, Muslim and Hindu. Although the U.S. Census Bureau does not solicit information about faith, it goes without saying that Star Wars occupies near divine status in the […]
Posted inGuides
Getting your docs in a row
The title of the special curated program for the eighth annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is Why War?, a series of eight programs examining the motivations for armed conflict. However, an equally applicable query might be Is Bigger Better? Can the largest documentary showcase in the United States continue to expand without sacrificing its […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Blood, jokes and daggers
Conceived as an outlet for the macabre, the Nevermore Horror & Gothic Film Festival has not only gained a fine reputation among genre enthusiasts, but is one of the quintessential showcases for low-budget auteurism among the several film series sponsored each year by Durham’s Carolina Theatre. Still, that does not stop the festival’s selection committee […]
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Neil Morris’ Top 10 Films of 2004
House of Flying Daggers/Hero–It was the year of Yimou, as the acclaimed 53-year-old director crafted these two visual and lyrical marvels, redefining wuxia pian cinema without sacrificing its essence. The Aviator–Martin Scorsese’s enthralling, superbly crafted chronicle of the life of billionaire businessman Howard Hughes serves as a metaphor for the demise of America’s bygone golden […]
