Retro Review: Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining Once Defined Horror, Today It’s Stating the Obvious

The classic 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel is an examination of the impotence of male rage, but in a post-#MeToo world it feels much less relevant.

Even if you’ve never seen it, it’s hard to separate the legend of The Shining from the film itself. Its key moments have become part of our cultural lexicon. “Heeeere’s Johnny!” “Redrum” “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” It has been parodied by The Simpsons and Key & Peele. It inspired…

Double Your Hard-Boiled Pleasure With This Year’s Noir City Festival

The 2024 film fest spans two weeks and screens numerous double features: Here are four must-see pairings.

As temperatures drop and fallen leaves remind us of the cycle of life and decay, October arrives and with it the return of Noir City D.C.: The Washington D.C. Film Noir Festival. As always, Eddie Muller and the Film Noir Foundation bring a smartly selected lineup of crime dramas to Silver Spring’s AFI Silver for…

How Scream Rebooted a Genre That Was Bleeding Out

In 1996, horror was dying until a young movie-obsessed writer teamed up with Wes Craven to pay homage to Halloween and give high school students something to Scream about.

“Be careful,” Randy says near the end of Scream. “They always come back for one last scare.”  He might have been talking about the genre itself. Horror has existed nearly since the beginning of cinema, but in 1996 it was on its last breath due to a series of declining sequels to slasher classics such…

Not Only Does Joker: Folie à Deux Waste Lady Gaga’s Talent, It’s a Tedious Bore to Boot

Directed by Todd Phillips, the sequel to the 2019 film is oddly anemic, a stiff jukebox musical that has little to say about its beloved pop culture villains.

Superhero movies were at the peak of their popularity when Joker first hit theaters in 2019. It arrived months after Avengers: Endgame became a box office megahit, and for fans worldwide, co-writer and director Todd Phillips’ origin story for Batman’s primary adversary represented the genre’s potential to be taken seriously. Although Joker borrowed heavily from…

Calamity Now

Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is an impenetrable mess that cinephiles will feel obligated to see anyway.

“A film director is one of the last truly dictatorial posts left,” Francis Ford Coppola said with just a trace of wistfulness in 1990, “in a world that’s getting more and more democratic.” The observation comes from Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, the superb 1991 documentary looking back on what in the mid-’70s seemed…

Eight Artsy Event Recs From RIYL’s Brandon Wetherbee

City Paper readers have no excuse to be bored this fall, with events from drag stars and Jenny Slate to Día de los Muertos celebrations.

Singing, dancing, crafting, face painting, very old cinema, and British people cracking wise about Americans are some of the best ways to spend autumn in D.C. In a very political town at the most political time of year, here are eight picks that have nothing to do with politics.  Willow Pill at the Howard Theatre…

Now Showing: Fall Film Events to See

Film writers Pat Padua, Alan Zilberman, and Sarah Marloff share the film festivals, screenings, and specialty showings they’re most excited to watch this fall—from noir to ’90s.

Washington may fall well short of New York’s sprawling repertory and festival scene. But one major advantage of the DMV is that, in addition to the commercial screenings at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center (a venue that beats any in Manhattan for style and screen size), you can supplement your continuing film education with…

Close Your Eyes Is a Gorgeous Swan Song from an Aging Master Filmmaker

In his first feature in more than 30 years, Víctor Erice has made a great, stirring film about death and memory.

Spanish filmmaker Víctor Erice has not made a feature-length film in more than 30 years. His debut, 1973’s The Spirit of the Beehive, was an instant classic of Spanish and global cinema—it’s currently ranked 85th on the prestigious Sight & Sound list of the greatest films ever made. So any new film from him is…

Watch This: DC/DOX’s Co-founder Sky Sitney has Film Fest Recs and More

The Georgetown cinema professor is deeply plugged into the city’s arts scene and she’s looking forward to seeing Matthew Broderick on stage at Shakespeare Theatre Company, the Magnetic Fields, AFI’s Latin American Film Festival, and more.

If you have any interest in documentary cinema, you probably know Sky Sitney. She is the festival director of DC/DOX, the city’s new-ish documentary film festival that ran for the second time earlier this summer. A cinema professor at Georgetown University, Sitney attracts luminaries in the nonfiction film world, and sometimes even the subjects of…

Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round Examines Civil Rights History at Glen Echo Amusement Park

Ilana Trachtman’s recently released documentary on the Glen Echo desegregation protests takes an edifying turn through an underappreciated local episode in the movement’s history.

The new documentary Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round takes its title from Langston Hughes’ 1942 poem about the absurdities of segregation. “On the bus we’re put in the back,” he writes, “But there ain’t no back/ To a merry-go-round!” In the film, the carousel in question was (and is today) a main attraction at…

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