by Seth Rogovoy In a bizarre, almost meta- confluence of perfect timing, disgraced fraudster financier Bernie Madoff died in prison last week, just as Alicia Jo Rabins’s brilliant, rock musical film “A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff” began making the rounds of film festivals, with various online screenings, on its way toward a broader theatrical…
by Seth Rogovoy On paper it sounds like a car crash, a horrible disaster, or worse – a gross indecency that violates the memory of those who died in the Shoah. But in practice, Hunters, a new Prime Video 10-episode TV series starring Al Pacino leading a vigilante band of Nazi hunters and executioners,…
By Seth Rogovoy Alfred Hitchcock’s reputation as one of the greatest film directors of all time is safely in the can, so all that’s left to deal with is the man himself. Two new films — “Hitchcock,” a biopic starring Anthony Hopkins, and the HBO film “The Girl,” about Hitch’s troubled relationship with actress Tippi…
Review by Seth Rogovoy Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007) is probably one of the best films of the past quarter-century – probably one of the 100 best films of all time. So anything he does subsequently will have a hard time measuring up to what may be seen as his masterpiece. The…
Review by Seth Rogovoy (PITTSFIELD, Mass.) – While it may be lost on the average or casual moviegoer, there has been a revolution in the film industry over the last decade or two in terms of how movies are made, shown, and distributed. Just as in other art forms and modes of business and communication,…
By Seth Rogovoy How is it possible that the 1976 movie The Missouri Breaks was such a critical and commercial failure that most people have never seen or heard of it? After all, rarely has more talent been assembled on a single project than for this movie; the film stars Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson…
Marina Abramovic at screening of ‘The Artist Is Present’ at the Mahaiwe for The BIFF Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present Berkshire International Film Festival Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center Great Barrington, Mass. Friday, June 1, 2012 by Seth Rogovoy The choice to screen Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present at the Berkshire International Film Festival…
The Hunger Games Directed by Gary Ross Based on the story by Suzanne Collins Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Donald Sutherland Despite its lavish spectacle, The Hunger Games is surprisingly subdued – in a good way – for a Hollywood entertainment of its scale. Director Gary Ross would like this dystopic…
MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE Written and directed by Sean Durkin Starring Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, and Sarah Paulson Reviewed by Seth Rogovoy Writer-director Sean Durkin, who deservedly won the Best Director award last January at Sundance for Martha Marcy May Marlene, wisely allows his actors’ faces to do the heavy lifting in this captivating psychological…
THE GUARD Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh Starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle Review by Seth Rogovoy Sure, you’ve seen this story before: two unlikely buddies — here played by Irishman Brendan Gleeson as a somewhat eccentric small-town Irish police chief and African-American Don Cheadle as the big-shot FBI man sent to Gleeson’s…
