John Beifuss

Fearless and flamboyant, the late William Kendall was an outspoken champion of art cinema and gay pride at a time when both concepts were met with suspicion or even hostility by most Memphians.

Dishonorably discharged male War on Terror vets menace attractive female campers in “Black Rock,” a photogenic Maine-set shocker that seems to have been motivated by a desire to craft a commercial thriller with an indie aesthetic — and budget.

“Lore” is a coming-of-age story in an extreme context. The title character, Hannelore (Saskia Rosendahl), a pretty teenager, is the daughter of Nazis, forced to become a surrogate mother to the three siblings she leads through the Black Forest after ...

Sprawling, even meandering, the 146-minute movie version of Salman Rushdie’s 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel “Midnight’s Children” is faithful to its source to a fault — probably because Rushdie himself wrote the script, with director Deepa Mehta.

“Peeples” is straight-up sitcom, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Poor Ariel. He’s talking to hotties in a late-night dance club in Valparaíso, Chile, when an earthquake hits, crushing a hostess before he even can get her number.

“Disconnect” is “Crash” for the age of social media.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel “The Great Gatsby,” “the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg” are a symbol of God or fate or some other mysterious presence.

Dear Mother Nature: Was it something we said? Or did? Sure, we tried to build a highway through Overton Park. But that was long ago.

Original and extraordinary, writer-director Shane Carruth’s “Upstream Color” may represent a milestone in true independent cinema, or at least a steppingstone between the smart microbudget work signified by its star, Amy Seimetz, and the more grandiose aspirations associated with someone ...

Yes, it would be easy to spoof or deride “To the Wonder.” Terrence Malick’s new film eliminates the dinosaurs, the tough Texas kids and Jessica Chastain — the things many viewers most enjoyed in the director’s previous film, “The Tree ...

The 16th annual Indie Memphis Film Festival begins this year on Halloween.

Robert Redford’s “The Company You Keep,” a sympathetic look at the wrinkled radicals of the 1960s, expands this weekend into Memphis and some other markets less than two weeks after the Boston Marathon bombings.

“Mud” has the feel of a classic, although it’s perhaps not enthralling enough to be one. The third and most elaborate feature to date from writer-director Jeff Nichols seems to have been adapted from a novel that doesn’t exist.

If ambition, purpose and potential impact netted Oscars, “Girl Rising” might be the most honored film in Academy history.

About 30 film programs — including features, shorts and music videos — are scheduled for this year's On Location: Memphis festival.

Nuclear anxiety becomes a distraction from teenage pressures and a projection of potentially explosive emotional distress in “Ginger & Rosa,”.

Memphis soul will be supersized when the PBS special “In Performance at the White House: Memphis Soul” is shown on the big screen Tuesday night at the Malco Paradiso, 584 S. Mendenhall.

Capsule descriptions and starred mini-reviews by John Beifuss.

The rapid editing, wide-angle compositions, garish colors, slice-and-dice chronology and electronic music that director Danny Boyle uses for his shiny new art-heist hypnosis thriller, “Trance,” are signatures of his style.

When the Found Footage Festival returns Monday night to Memphis, it will introduce moviegoers to a truly original performer, Frank Pacholski, star of a 1999 program that apparently shocked or at least dumbfounded even the seen-it-all overseers of Los Angeles ...

A collapsed bridge stymied the escape plans of the college students trapped in the haunted forest in the original version of “The Evil Dead.”

Nominated this year for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature, “The Gatekeepers” is both journalistic coup and unsettling confirmation of the idea that “you can’t make peace using military means,”.

Outside the sitcom or fantasy contexts of an “Are We There Yet?” sequel or a “Karate Kid” remake, depictions of black children on movie screens in America are so rare that when one is introduced to Komona (Rachel Mwanza), the ...

“Caesar Must Die,” the concluding feature in this year’s third annual Italian Film Festival USA at the University of Memphis, is bookended with footage from an unusual performance of Shakespeare’s tragedy “Julius Caesar.”

Late in “On the Road,” a succession of images connects the promise of the expansive American landscape with the freedom of expression and self-invention that is another of this country’s wonders.

H.G. Wells. “Star Trek.” Superman. Pulp fiction.

“Spring Breakers” is the already notorious movie about four young college women determined to join their peers and have fun in Florida.

In the final chapter of “The Story of Film: An Odyssey,” Mark Cousins’ epic documentary history of cinema (currently unspooling in segments each Saturday at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art), Sweden’s Roy Andersson, director of “Songs from the Second ...

"Admission" milks the motherhood theme with such vigor it requires Fey’s character to help a cow deliver her calf.

The humor’s classic or prehistoric, depending on your tolerance for slapstick. The animation is state of the art. And the life lessons are all too wearily contemporary in “The Croods,” an energetic DreamWorks digital cartoon feature about a family of ...

I never knew I wanted a movie in which a heroic 911 operator played by Halle Berry rescues the “Little Miss Sunshine” girl from a serial killer until I saw “The Call.”

A native of suburban Chattanooga, artist Wayne White was perhaps an unlikely architect of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.”

Daughter of Hollywood royalty. Bride of Frank Sinatra. Friend of the Beatles. Muse of Woody Allen. Mother of “Rosemary’s Baby.”

Daughter of Hollywood royalty, bride of Frank Sinatra, muse of Woody Allen, advocate for children’s rights and mother of “Rosemary’s Baby,” actress Mia Farrow will be at Rhodes College on March 19 to talk about movies, politics and “mobilizing community ...

I think the first time I realized it had become permissible to like Journey again was in 1995, when the Foo Fighters performed a sincere cover of “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” during a concert encore at the New Daisy Theater on ...

Apparently, this will be a busy year for Memphis-based filmmaker Craig Brewer.

Michelle Obama’s appearance at the apex of Sunday night’s Academy Awards telecast was perhaps appropriate, because this year’s ceremony — ethnic references and breast jokes aside — was all about the equitable distribution of wealth, as represented by those gold-plated ...

Unlike the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards don’t include a distinct category for “Best Motion Picture — Drama.”

To differentiate his movie career from his professional wrestling career, Dwayne Johnson some time ago banished his ring alias from his film credits.

The deadline is Feb. 28 to submit a short film or video to the new “Memphis Rocks” category of the On Location: Memphis International Film and Music Fest.

William Faulkner was a screenwriter as well as a novelist. Even so, it’s safe to say his hometown of Oxford, Miss., prizes his work on “The Sound and the Fury,” a saga of Yoknapatawpha County, over his contributions to “Land ...

A Memphis movie that earned much more publicity than “AS:VS — At Stake: Vampire Solutions” also arrives on disc Tuesday.

A spinal tap is a way of extracting fluid from the body. So perhaps it’s appropriate that the “mockumentary” approach of “This Is Spinal Tap” was an influence on “AS:VS — At Stake: Vampire Solutions,” a locally produced comedy-drama inspired ...

A Brooklyn filmmaker with funding from Venice is coming to Memphis to shoot a movie about a troubled young soul-blues singer.

The inevitable consequences of a decades-long, till-death-do-us-part romance is detailed in "Amour."

Call it Apocalypse Meow. Or maybe Purrmageddon.

"Identity Thief" makes good use of McCarthy's larger-than-life persona and broad and robust presence on-screen.

Fans of classic cinema, ring the social-media bells, and spread the word: In what might be one of the more memorable movie events of the year, improvisational organist Tom Trenney is returning to Memphis to accompany a revival of the ...

Debuting Monday night on WKNO-TV Channel 10, "A Community Called Orange Mound" is an overdue documentary celebration of Memphis' proud, historic African-American neighborhood.