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
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
ONLY Steven Spielberg could do what is done in War Horse. Only he could have authorized the expensive World War I re-creations: a sumptuous cavalry charge, with officers Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom …

By Richard von Busack
Show up early and get into the sweet spot in a 70mm Imax Theater  meaning, near the center and back a row or two. Not only will you be the first person …

By Richard von Busack
In setting up the career of the ultimate arch-villain, Arthur Conan-Doyle may have introduced him wrong-way round. We don’t witness the moment of discovery when Sherlock Holmes first pieces together the vastness …