Director Jim Jarmusch’s latest film, The Limits of Control, is a confection of weirdness and camp with a sprinkling of brilliance, and that turns out to be not enough. There is a plot outline, but no real plot. And while there is a first-rate cast, some of whom have previously worked with Jarmusch on some…

Movies based on real-life events or people tend to sink or soar based on the level of dramatic imagination injected into the true story; that is the creative element that burnishes details and streamlines the narrative to reveal the complexities that make a story worth telling. Think A Beautiful Mind or The Hurricane or even…

Traditional sports movies, particularly those about baseball, are usually suffused with nostalgia and sentimentality. A few, such as Field of Dreams, do it well enough to endear themselves. Most, like the utterly ridiculous For Love of the Game, are pure treacle.   But the new baseball film, Sugar (Azucar in Spanish), released to coincide with the…

Every generation needs its Tom Joad, the everyman protagonist in The Grapes of Wrath, struggling in the face of untenable odds. Given the dire straits we face today, there is a filmmaking temptation to recreate Joad for modern times. In Explicit Ills actor-turned-director Mark Webber takes an unsuccessful stab at it. The film, in which…

I’ve been waiting a long time for Medicine for Melancholy, a small, independent film is the debut effort from writer-director Barry Jenkins. It’s a love story that’s not about love. It is a movie that examines race, but there are no large black men in drag; no broad farcical elements; no hip-hop; no bling; no family…

Well, there is nothing to be done now. Academy voters have made their selections and with some exceptions, they represent the ho-hum, narrow reality of said voters. Yes, Slumdog Millionaire is included in the Best Picture category (but, like the new administration, it might be a tad overhyped). And they got it all right in…

The week that Barack Obama was sworn in as the nation’s first black president, the talented Robert Downey Jr. received an Oscar nomination for his role in the late-summer flick Tropic Thunder. The honored performance involved a character in blackface and an Afro wig; the role, a brilliant showcase for the actor’s “Ebonics vocal training.”…

A funny thing happened to the movie New in Town on the way to your local multiplex: Angela Bassett morphed into Gabrielle Union, who then became Renée Zellweger. This is not entirely shocking. “Colorblind” casting has been around for a while. Remember that the drill sergeant in An Officer and a Gentleman was slated to…