What industry disruptions mean for independent filmmakers in Baltimore
COVID cancellations don’t just deprive filmmakers of a chance to show their movies to audiences, but it’s at festivals where movies end up being purchased for distribution.
Programmed like a TV channel, Cinephobe is guided by a passionate, discerning, and decidedly inclusive approach to movies
“We’re a small group of film enthusiasts with a sense of humor and a low tolerance for stupidity,” The Cinephobe told BmoreArt.
Not journalistic filmmaking exactly, but it isn’t hagiography either
This meandering documentary uses the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls season (the last one with Jordan and, therefore, the last time the Jordan-led team won big) as scaffolding for a larger story about Michael Jordan and basketball.
Curated and programmed like a TV channel, QuaranTV showcases arthouse features, YouTube compilations, cartoons and more
With set times for morning cartoons and kid stuff, lots of movies, live musical performances, and original programming, there’s a mixtape quality to QuaranTV.
Director/writer Eliza Hittman's new film Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Never Rarely Sometimes Always is something of a procedural, except the procedure here isn’t a police investigation or anything along those lines, it’s an abortion.
Director Louie Schwartzberg, who has made a name for himself over the past few decades because of his ravishing time-lapse photography, has likely found the ideal subject to suit his schtick in Fantastic Fungi, a movie about the inarguable special-ness of mushrooms
Fantastic Fungi is also a portrait of a community of mushroom obsessives—who journalist Eugenia Bone beautifully describes as, “bloated pleasure-seekers with a scientific bent.”
Bacurau, streaming via the Parkway, will make you wanna start the revolution—if only you could leave your house
The town of Bacurau fights back, they do some damage, and it feels like a victory for its characters and for viewers, a blueprint for imminent direct action and self-defense.
On Marnie Ellen Hertzler's Crestone which you can’t watch anywhere right now
Baltimore filmmaker Marnie Ellen Hertzler’s Crestone feels like a great piece of outré journalism. It found the sweet spot of making you feel as though you’re there watching something happen and commenting on it all only when necessary.
A less cloying way for “mainstream” movies to ponder #MeToo, an encouraging trend in Hollywood movies
A sleepy spy movie that turns into a slow-burn romance and then a tragic catharsis
What looks like a staid costume drama is more like if Chantal Ackerman got ahold of a Merchant-Ivory movie.
A selection of small, working-class movies often forgotten for more serious fare when it comes time to think about Black History
Cotton Comes To Harlem, The Monkey Hustle, and Amazing Grace
At Hamilton Gallery, meditative psychedelic soul-searching with an Xbox controller
If 1917, a video game, is a movie, then Oldenburg's video games, sitting in the back room of the Hamilton Gallery, are movies.
The deeply personal educational documentary explores the origins of an African fabric.
Obinyan ostensibly frames Wax Print around asking the question, “Is wax print African?” It’s a question that is both impossible to answer and has a pretty obvious answer: Yes. You have likely seen wax print and, just as likely, somebody ripping off its style.
Semi-fictional new wave movie ambles around with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Merce Cunningham's challenging choreography—in 3D!
Downtown 81, a somewhat fictional, hang-out movie starring Jean-Michel Basquiat and Alla Kovgan's assiduous documentary, Cunningham, screening in Baltimore
Anthony's new film about instant replay and tennis is an incredibly subversive 36-minute dérive of a documentary, viewed in ESPN's 30 for 30 series.
This is how one should reckon with sport—an expressive, important, often communal thing that is also big business and ultimately comes down to, well, rules that never entirely make sense.
Director Djibril Diop Mambéty's classic is screening for free at the Parkway
Baltimoreans in particular might find something familiar in the film Hyenas, where of a town rendered poor by outside forces falls susceptible to corruption.
The year in Baltimore movies
Not documentary exactly (though a few fit that category) but works where reality sneaks up and disrupts form and storytelling in unpredictable and expressionistic ways.
