by Richard von Busack
ANOTHER BRILLIANT movie from the land of brilliant movies, Iran’s A Separation unfolds in layers, with a secret revealed in the last 20 minutes.
There isn’t a lead actor per se; the cast …

(Showtimes and tickets here)
By Richard von Busack
The heroism of the Tuskegee Airmen, African-Americans who fought and died for a nation that treated them as second-class citizens, will never be forgot. The movie Red Tails, however…forget …

by Richard von Busack
STEPHEN DALDRY’S film Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (ticket info here)  like Jonathan Safran Foer’s source novel, concerns a child’s act of denial about Sept. 11. He ultimately reverses time’s arrow through …

by Richard von Busack
More adventures of the Elric brothers, blasted by the power of alchemy, restored somewhat by metal prosthetics. One is the intrepid, golden-eyed Ed, who sacrificed his arm to keep his Al alive …

by Richard von Busack
AFTER THE American Civil War, politicians used to make hay by reminding the crowd of Confederate atrocities. “Waving the bloody shirt” was the expression. Whatever the Bosnian word for “shirt” is, director/writer …

by Richard von Busack
Valery Todorovsky’s energetic Russian hit musical Hipsters (tickets here) concerns the “stilyagi”—the few but proud counter-culturists of Moscow in 1955. In Moscow, clean cut Mels (Anton Shagin) is running with his Party-member …

A QUARTET of nasty bourgeois, played by four top-drawer actors with crack timing, make Roman Polanski’s Carnage (showtimes here) a civilized entertainment. Based on Parisian author Yasmina Reza’s play God of Carnage, the film is …

By Richard von Busack
Should-have-been successes, musicians’ musicians that they were and are: Fishbone are profiled in Lev Anderson and Chris Metzler’s delightful Everyday Sunshine, playing at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco through Friday.
Fishbone had …

By Richard von Busack
Gary Oldman was in town to promote his lead role in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (showtimes here) as John le Carre’s smaller than life mole-hunter George Smiley. Oldman is tightly focused, shrewd …

By Richard von Busack
Sweden’s Tomas Alfredson follows up the best vampire movie of the last few years with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It’s about a different breed of parasites:  justifiable (sometimes self-justifiable) as Britain’s last …