Film Festivals

The Sting Turns 40, German and Polish Film Festivals and More: Your Weekly Movie To-Do List

Friday, Oct. 4 Tonight at 7:30 p.m., you have quite a few choices. At the Egyptian Theatre, the German Currents: Film Festival Los Angeles series kicks off with an opening party and the screening of Measuring the World (Die Vermessung der Welt), based on the best-selling novel by Daniel Kehlmann. T ... More >>

A Sundance Festival in L.A.

Will Anyone Buy My Amazing Festival Movie?

As tends to be the case, several of the best films made in the last year have yet to screen outside of the festival circuit. For some this is because their scheduled release date simply hasn't arrived; others are still waiting to be picked up by a distributor in the first place. The vagaries of cin ... More >>

Christmas Films, From Romantic to Bloody: Your Weekly Movie To-Do List

Our weekly list of special event films to see: Friday, Dec. 14 What would make 1946 classic It's a Wonderful Life even more wonderful? Seeing it on ice! Put those ice-skating moves to work while the Echo Park Film Center Filmmobile plays the movie (Christmas cake is promised). Keep an eye on its Tw ... More >>

The Beats Go On: Your Weekly Movie To-Do List

Our weekly list of special event movies to see in L.A. Friday, Nov. 30 The Beat generation -- or, as Cinefamily puts it, the "O.G. hipsters" of the 1950s -- is a pretty tough group to beat. They smoked, drank and wandered aimlessly, all while producing literature that through the decades has avoide ... More >>

AFI Fest 2012: Who Will Win the Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film?

Top 12 LGBT Movies You Need To See, as Picked by Film Fest Organizers

Outfest, L.A.'s gay and lesbian film festival, ended on Sunday, reminding us that films about the LGBT experience serve an important role in the community, from teaching teenage boys and girls that it's alright to kiss other boys and girls, respectively, to connecting social activists with images su ... More >>

The Great Greek

Fuck SXSW: 10 Ways to Re-Create It in Los Angeles

South by Southwest (or just "South by" if you're cool and/or in a fake hurry) is well under way, with the interactive and film portions kicking off last weekend and the biggest draw, the music, just beginning. Couldn't make it all the way to Texas? Fuck it. For those of us left behind, we bring you ... More >>

Lars Von Trier's Zentropa at LACMA

Sundance Film Festival 2012 Wrap-up

Indie filmmakers grapple with "reality"

Sundance Film Festival 2012: An Experiment

Tomorrow I leave Los Angeles for Park City, Utah, where I'll attend and report on the Sundance Film Festival for the seventh time in as many years. As a film critic and the editor of the Weekly's Film section, attending major film festivals (I go to Sundance, Cannes and Toronto) is the most importan ... More >>

LACMA Goes Hollywood With Elvis Mitchell

Museum scrapped its film program for a star-studded partnership aimed at courting showbiz bucks — helmed by the nation's most controversial critic

Your Weekly Movie To-Do List

Vincent Gallo, twice

Toronto Film Festival: Jafar Panahi's This is Not a Film and Why That Title is Both Right and Wrong

Jafar Panahi and Igi in This is Not a Film​ TIFF 2011's opening night festivities were emblematic of the Festival's sometimes chaotic diversity. While a press screening of the highly-anticipated Moneyball and the world premiere of Davis Guggenheim's U2 doc From the Sky Down thrilled the red ca ... More >>

Indiest Indie Film fest in the whole indie land

Cannes 2011: The Winners

​ CANNES, FRANCE. The 64th Cannes Film Festival provided an exceptionally rich and varied slate and the jury--headed by Robert De Niro--proved both gracious and judicious in dividing their prizes among eight films.

Cannes 2011: Lars von Trier Kicked Out

Lars von Trier's Melancholia​ CANNES, FRANCE -- Big news day on La Croisette: First, the only outside story with any traction here became a bit more intense when reports of Dominique Strauss-Kahn's resignation fueled the conspiracy stories to which some French subscribe: Had the IMF chief been ... More >>

Cannes 2011: The Quest to Avoid Lady Gaga Begins!

​ CANNES, FRANCE -- That faint noise wafting in mid-afternoon from across the Atlantic will not be the cacophony of bravos raising the Grand Palais roof in appreciation of the 65th Cannes Film Festival's opening attraction -- rather it will be the sound of the prolonged smooch that the fest's ... More >>

Sundance Film Festival: Duh, Hot Girls Make Difficult Films More Marketable

An alternate universe with an uncertain future

LAFF + L.A. LIVE = Luv

But will the Los Angeles Film Festival work downtown?

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE UNDISCOVERED, BABY, TO BE IN MY SHOW

SNEAK PEAK OF THE WEEK

Godard, zombies and the economy: ColCoa French film festival starts tonight

This post is by Doug Cummings, author of the world cinema blog FilmJourney.org. ​ Since 1996, the annual City of Lights, City of Angeles film festival has offered a week of North American and world premieres of new French films along with an array of public discussions and events. It's known ... More >>

SXSW: Gone to the Masses

Yet fest still has fresh, experimental edge

Growing Pains: Inside the SXSW Film Awards

​ Tonight's SXSW Film Awards began with a speech, apparently conceived at the last minute, by SXSW co-founder and Austin Chronicle editor Louis Black. With negative buzz building against the festival's overcrowded screenings (lines routinely circled blocks, and at some highly-anticipated scre ... More >>

Pulp Fiction: Aaron Katz's Cold Weather

​ The first unqualified hit of 2010 SXSW Film Festival premiered last night to a packed crowd (including recent Oscar snubbee Jason Reitman) at Austin's Alamo Ritz. Cold Weather, directed by two-time SXSW alum Aaron Katz (his Dance Party USA and Quiet City premiered here in 2006 and 2007, and ... More >>

6 SXSW Film Must-Sees

​ If you're heading to Austin for the SXSW Interactive or Music festivals and have a Gold or Platinum badge, you can use it to get into screenings at the SXSW Film Festival, which starts today and runs all the way through the end of the Music fest next week. SXSW Film has made a name for thems ... More >>

Sundance's Rebel Yell

The festival goes back to its roots — or does it?

Sundance: What's Happening NEXT?

Festival’s new microbudget indie sidebar is nothing to mumble home about

Film Critic To Take Reigns of LA Film Fest

Newsweek film critic David Ansen was named artistic director of the Los Angeles Film Festival Monday. The writer, who still contributes to Newsweek after leaving fulltime duties in March, will be in charge of helping to narrow down selections and finalists for the influential showcase that happens e ... More >>

AFI Fest 2009: What if Movies Were Free?

A changing film world — and hard times — means comp tickets

CSI Paris: French Crime at LACMA

And You Can Take That to the Burbank

Sundance Shocker

This just over the wire from the Sundance Institute:"Sundance Institute today confirmed that effective February 28, 2009, Geoffrey Gilmore is resigning his position as Director, Sundance Film Festival. Gilmore joined Sundance Institute in 1990. As Director of the Sundance Film Festival he has w ... More >>

Sundance, R.I.P.?

"Will everyone be wearing black?" a friend asked over dinner the other night when the subject arose of my imminent departure for the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. "I'm so glad I'm not going to Sundance," confided one longtime film publicist at this week's Los Angeles Film Critics awards dinner, as if ... More >>

Foundas on Film: Sundance, R.I.P.?

"Will everyone be wearing black?" a friend asked over dinner the other night when the subject arose of my imminent departure for the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. "I'm so glad I'm not going to Sundance," confided one longtime film publicist at this week's Los Angeles Film Critics awards dinner, as if ... More >>

Toronto in the Round

As the Toronto Film Festival neared its end, I agreed to participate in a roundtable discussion about the festival's highs and lows, organized by Eye Weekly critics Jason Anderson and Adam Nayman (the latter an occasional L.A. Weekly contributor) and also featuring Variety critic Robert Koehler and ... More >>

Sundance: A Midwinter Night's Dream

Finding gems in the snow at 2008's festival

Lust, Yawn, Caution

There is a famous story about actor-director Erich von Stroheim that goes something like this: Cast as Rommel in Billy Wilder's 1943 Five Graves to Cairo, Stroheim was given a prop Leica camera as part of the character's wardrobe and proceeded to demand that the camera have film in it. When Wilder a ... More >>

Two Weeks in Manhattan

A veteran critic turns rookie programmer for the 45th New York Film Festival By Scott Foundas From The Reeler On Monday, July 30, as I arrived in New York for my first tour of duty on the New York Film Festival selection committee, I received an e-mail announcing the death of Ingmar Bergman -- one ... More >>

Let the Sunshine In

Last Thursday morning in Paris, the lineup was announced for the 60th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. The announcement was made by Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux during a press conference held in a gilded and mirrored salon of the Hotel de Crillon, located on the Place de la Co ... More >>

Missing the Ex-Factor

AFI remembers the past, neglects the present

Vote For Pedro (and Larry)

The small but conspicuous coterie of film critics seen perambulating this year's Toronto Film Festival decked out in red-and-white "Vote For Pedro" t-shirts were not, despite the potential misunderstanding, expressing their undying love for Napoleon Dynamite. Rather, the Pedro in question was Pedro ... More >>

And the Winners Are...

As I write this, a fresh blanket of snow has turned Park City, Utah into a veritable winter wonderland and, in an unprecedented occurrence, the jury and audience members of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival have proved unanimous in their assessment of the best of the fest. In the dramatic competition, ... More >>

Days 5 & 6: The Midpoint

Halfway through this year's Toronto Film Festival, gossip about the festival's hits and misses has reached something of a fever pitch. As far as I've been able to gather, a few movies — Bennett Miller's Capote, Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy and Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain among them ... More >>

So Very Good

Rachel Rosen programs the Los Angeles Film Festival

Master, Old and New

One way to Toronto 2003

Let's Say It's Hot

Rotterdam, the necessary festival

Money No Enough

Asia's financial crisis has its filmmakers scrounging for dollars