Celebrating 10 Years: The 2018 Milwaukee Film Festival
The great French film director François Truffaut had a simple rule: If you want to know what a story’s really about, reflect on what’s changed by the end. By that metric, the story of the Milwaukee...
View ArticleThe 2018 Milwaukee Film Festival: Das Kino
Throughout my first year of teaching in West Bend, my paychecks always misspelled my name. Forgiving others for overlooking my surname’s very German second “n” has always been easy—after all, I have...
View ArticleMFF 2018 Review: “Wild Nights with Emily”
Madeleine Olnek’s latest comedy is about a poet, but it’s not really about poetry. Instead, “Wild Nights with Emily,” which screened last night as the Milwaukee Film Festival’s centerpiece film,...
View ArticleReview: “Sicario: Day of the Soldado”
Of all the movies I would have guessed “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” to remind me of, “Jackie Brown” wouldn’t have been one of them. Hear me out. The second installment of the “Sircario” series is,...
View ArticleThe 2018 Milwaukee Film Festival: Top Five
“They’re both judges,” explained Peter Goldberg, a retired public defender, as he waved at two filmgoers seated near the front of the Jan Serr Studio Cinema. We were there to see “The Guilty,” a Danish...
View ArticleConversation: Critics Eric Beltmann and Shelly Sampon React to the 2018...
The 10th annual Milwaukee Film Festival, which closed Nov. 1, brought more than 300 films to audiences in southeastern Wisconsin. Critic Speak contributor Eric Beltmann and The Cinemaphile blogger...
View ArticleIntroducing the 2019 Milwaukee Film Festival
Like Charlie Chaplin’s famous prospector, the Milwaukee Film Festival knows there’s gold to be found due north. By adding the historic Rivoli Theatre in downtown Cedarburg to its roster of sites, the...
View ArticleMFF 2019 Interview: Maryam Sepehri Says Her New Documentary is ‘Very Personal’
While it won’t win any trophies for elegance, “Mouth Harp in Minor Key: Hamid Naficy in/on Exile” still has one of the best titles of any movie at this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival. The documentary...
View ArticleMFF 2019: Cinema Hooligante Picks for Halloween
Two seconds and three quick cuts is all Alfred Hitchcock needed to traumatize me. Watching “The Birds” on television as an impressionable 12-year-old seemed like a good idea until Jessica Tandy...
View ArticleThe 2019 Milwaukee Film Festival – Top Five
Might a third dimension be too much for the Milwaukee Film Festival? That prospect crossed my mind as I accepted a pair of 3D glasses for “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” a fluorescent Chinese marvel...
View ArticleReview: “Nomadland”
Critics who write with their politics first have all too conveniently positioned “Nomadland,” the Oscar frontrunner of the case-sensitive Moment, as an indictment of individualism. But that’s frankly...
View ArticleDanny Baldwin’s Top 10 Movies of 2021
For the first time in 24 years, or since “Titanic” took home 11 statuettes a good six months before I would ultimately see it on the double-decker VHS set, I will be skipping the Oscars telecast this...
View ArticleMovie Review: “The Banshees of Inisherin”
You may have been cut loose by a friend at one time or another. I have, and I’ve been the one swinging the axe, though it’s the former perspective that interests me the most. What does it say about us...
View ArticleMovie Review: “The Whale”
“Why are you fucking with me like this?” Sadie Sink cries out to Brendan Fraser late in “The Whale,” in an exchange that can be read as the film’s climax or its resolution, depending on your outlook....
View ArticleReview: “Nomadland”
Critics who write with their politics first have all too conveniently positioned “Nomadland,” the Oscar frontrunner of the case-sensitive Moment, as an indictment of individualism. But that’s frankly...
View ArticleDanny Baldwin’s Top 10 Movies of 2022
Timing the publication of my annual Top 10 list has long been a tricky thing for me. If I haven’t seen all of the movies I perceive as “necessary contenders” – which is itself a highly arbitrary...
View ArticleIntroducing the 2023 Milwaukee Film Festival
Throw a spatula at this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival, and you’re likely to hit a movie about movies. One of them, “I Like Movies,” has a title that might double as a tagline for the festival’s 15th...
View ArticleMFF 2023: Local documentary spotlights four immigrant stories
To get invited to the Milwaukee Film Festival, all Hasti Ghasemivaghar needed was a good idea and 10 bucks. Ghasemivaghar’s “Coming to Small Town America” is one of six nonfiction shorts included in a...
View ArticleMFF 2023: Worldviews section packs plenty of global pedigree
If the Mexican horror movie “Huesera” turned over a blood sample, its genetic makeup might prove startling. There’s a malignancy inside of Valeria, the young, pregnant wife at the center of Michelle...
View ArticleMFF 2023: Festival Highlights
Never read your reviews, goes the old adage. But maybe it’s not so easy for an actor to ignore a bad notice while being heckled by his own director during their movie’s hometown premiere. “Boo!,”...
View Article