Category: rita cannon

The first words we hear in Doug Hamilton’s documentary Broadway Idiot are are from Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, as he solemnly intones, “There are people who like to do things the safe way, and that’s just never been part of...

I understand why many people find Diablo Cody’s work irritating. The rapid-fire, hyper-quirky, reference-saturated dialogue she’s known for can get tiring. Her characters sometimes sound a little too similar to each other. And no, I can’t really account for any...

Thanks For Sharing is a mainstream, star-studded, mostly upbeat ensemble dramedy about sex addiction. So it’s perhaps not a huge surprise that it’s biggest problems have to do with setting and maintaining the right tone, and shifting gears from light...

Ryan White’s documentary Good Ol’ Freda is one of the most relentlessly good-natured films I’ve ever seen in my life. A chronicle of the experiences of Freda Kelly, who served as the secretary to the Beatles from their days playing the Cavern...

In 2008, Destin Daniel Cretton made a short film called Short Term 12. Its tagline was, “A film about kids. And the grown-ups who hit them.” Cretton has now expanded Short Term 12 into a full-length feature that confronts the...

Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf’s is a documentary about a currently operating business, so it’s reasonable to expect that it’s basically going to be a feature-length commercial for the famous New York department store, and there isn’t necessarily anything wrong...

Deborah Anderson’s documentary Aroused tries to be a few different things at once – an exposé of the porn industry, a character study of some its most successful actresses, and a documentation of an art project about those actresses. Unfortunately,...

Arthur Newman should be so much more interesting than it is. It stars Emily Blunt and Colin Firth, two of the most charismatic actors working today. It explores themes that should be relatable to just about everyone: regret, failed dreams,...

At the risk of being thuddingly literal, I have to admit that I thought a movie called Mud would be more…muddy. Director Jeff Nichols’ last outing, the terrific Take Shelter, was a dark, creepy drama that put us inside the...