Tribeca 2019: "White as Snow"

Jason Adams reporting from the Tribeca Film Festival one last time...

The sins of the flesh have always been right there on the surface of Fairy Tales, waiting to be ravaged by sex and by violence, by finger and by claw. Crooked old ladies morph into comely lasses, and ripe red lips are ready to be plucked and plundered. Snow White didn't move in with seven little dudes by mistake -- whatever our imaginations can imagine, whatever wishes our hearts can make, they're all within reach for a price, endless sleep and poisoned apples. Anne Fontaine's White as Snow is just the latest in a long string of movies soft-coring up our princess fantasies...

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Doc Corner: Global Politics with AOC, Herzog, and Gorbachev

By Glenn Dunks

Two new documentaries cover politics in very different ways. One pounds the pavement on the trail of a brewing political movement from a relative newcomer, while the other examines the legacy of a presidential icon as directed by a man with nearly 40 documentary credits (and dozens more dramas) to his name.

Knock Down the House and Meeting Gorbachev are a fascinating pair; the scrappy underdog and the classic image of government. Although they have almost nothing in common beyond the surface, they offset one another, their strengths highlighting the others’ weaknesses in a particular way. One stands above the other in quality and in the sly way that they interrogate the long shadow of history...

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Soundtracking: Funny Games

by Chris Feil

Joining the Criterion Collection this week is Michael Haneke’s notorious Funny Games, a confrontational allegory about western obsession and consumption of violence as entertainment. Here a family is psychologically tortured by two young male invaders, with the fourth wall broken and the audience taunted for their refusal to stop watching. The film plays with the gentle and the profane within our society, the contrasts between them drawing out what is toxically mundane about both. Haneke introduces his metaphor in the film’s angelic opening scene, and music is his shocking first tool.

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Watch at Home: Never look away from ball culture while synchronized swimming

Nathaniel R giving you the heads up on what's available to you now to screen at home.

New on DVD/Blu-Ray
• Fighting With My Family - Rising star Florence Pugh (Lady Macbeth) leads the ensemble in this film about a female wrestler
• Her Smell - Elisabeth Moss won raves for playing a punkrock addict in this indie with a riot grrrl style soundtrack. 
• Never Look Away - the least discussed and last-released nominee for last year's historically popular Foreign Film competition at the Oscars (all five were hits which just about never happens) 

Also new: Liam Neeson in Cold Pursuit, the popular documentary Apollo 11, and the horror flick Happy Death Day 2 U. New to streaming after the jump...

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Bentonville: Fearless stuntwomen, retiring post-masters, and troubled schoolgirls

Part 2 of 3

Playing in traffic... (Captain America: Winter Soldier) one of the daily jobs of Hollywood stuntwomen

Aside from the very first opening night activities at Bentonville, the first film I attended was a work-in-progress doc called Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story. The director April Wright is still working on the final cut so there's still time to get more focused (it was easy to imagine this as an even fuller miniseries as it's trying to covering a lot!) but whatever it'll be in its final form will be entertaining...

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