Gus Van Sant

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Cinema paradisos

As Hollywood's summer fare goes cold, local film festivals heat up
Here's the dilemma: you love movies, but you also love the idea of taking a vacation to one of the many inviting resorts that New England has to offer — the beaches of Cape Cod or the Islands, picturesque towns in Maine or Rhode Island, or even the cultural and historical enclaves of Boston itself.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 16, 2010

Reality bites again

Getting a jump on the year in documentaries at True/False
At the tail end of February, for the second consecutive year, I (barely) escaped a late-winter hurricane to enter a Midwestern oasis of grass-fed beef, cheap cigarettes, Johnny Depp impersonators, and some of the finest documentaries you might just see this year.
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY | March 31, 2010

Hardboiled hub

The city’s gritty, criminal underbelly has redefined the dark, artistic vision known as Boston noir
When I was growing up in Roslindale a few decades back — among tribes of ignorant, second-generation immigrant kids whose favorite words began with “f” and “n” and who liked to torture small animals and beat up small children before they moved on to their future vocations as petty criminals, dead dope users, or real-estate agents.
By PETER KEOUGH | October 21, 2009

Festival atmosphere

Between the Blockbuster and the beach there are the film festivals of New England
Summer traditionally has been the happy hunting ground for Hollywood studios — the time when they unleash their big-budgeted, f/x-heavy warhorses on armies of newly freed schoolchildren and frazzled adults trying to beat the heat.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 09, 2009

Brave new RISD

After a year at the helm, president John Maeda is balancing broad shifts in the worlds of art, design, and business
The Rhode Island School of Design, for all its artful ambition, is a conservative place. Students draw. They mold clay. They are awash in taxidermy. So there was more than a little anxiety when John Maeda — sneaker designer, MIT professor, digital media rock star — took over as RISD president last summer.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 27, 2009

Review: Pedro

An inspiring life reduced to sound bites, clichés, and hugs
There's no other reason to see the film.
By PETER KEOUGH | April 28, 2009

Oscar predictions: Liberal gilt

Oscar wants to be a Millionaire
It's like a fairy tale for Hollywood liberals.
By PETER KEOUGH | February 18, 2009

2009 Oscar predictions

Martyr complex
This year the Oscars will honor the men who suffer for our sins and the women who don't wear make-up.
By PETER KEOUGH | February 11, 2009

Year in Film: Risky business

Films whose aspirations are more than Academic
Every year the studios hold back their best until the end of the year, but this year they let us down.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 24, 2008

Review: Milk

Van Sant's gay of reckoning
Van Sant's Milk of human kindness
By PETER KEOUGH | December 05, 2008

Interview: Cleve Jones

Retro active
Harvey Milk's protege Cleve Jones on the movie, Obama, and Prop8.
By PETER KEOUGH | November 25, 2008

Autumn peeves

Films with a full agenda
With pundits already reading political significance into summer blockbusters like The Dark Knight (“Is Batman a stand-in for George Bush? Discuss.”), the meatier movies of fall arrive not a moment too soon.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 11, 2008

Smoke screens

Does a surge of stoner movies mean America is going to pot?
What does it say about America that marijuana movies are a hot genre right now, perhaps hotter even than in the heyday of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong’s 1978 Up in Smoke ?
By PETER KEOUGH | August 18, 2008

Memory laps

Van Sant takes time for a ride in Paranoid Park
The memory plays tricks, but not enough to change the past.
By PETER KEOUGH | December 16, 2008

Pleasures still unknown

Conventions take Control of Ian Curtis
Ian Curtis (Sam Riley) of the Manchester band Joy Division wrote songs that evoke, with incantatory inevitability, terror, delight, and ecstasy.
By PETER KEOUGH | October 24, 2007

Funny frames

The films of Michael Haneke at the HFA and MFA
The seemingly endless final shot of Michael Haneke’s CACHÉ|HIDDEN might have shocked some viewers into an almost forgotten skill: watching.
By PETER KEOUGH | October 15, 2007

Yankee know-how

Telluride’s new American wave?
Back from the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, I proclaim a renaissance of American cinema.
By GERALD PEARY | September 12, 2007

Midnight paparazzo?

Delirious over Delirious; plus underground
Midnight Cowboy , that Oscar-winning classic of subterranean New York City, gets the homage it deserves with the wry, amusing Delirious.
By GERALD PEARY | August 28, 2007

Well hung

Mala Noche and Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman
Gus Van Sant’s arresting first feature, the 1985 Mala Noche , was a raw, libidinous tale of homosexual desire.
By GERALD PEARY | June 13, 2007

Paris je t'aime

A whirlwind tour of 18 arrondissements in 120 minutes
The concept for this anthology was a short film representing each of Paris’s 20 arrondissements, from the Jardins des Tuileries (#1) to the Cimitière du Père Lachaise (#20).
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 23, 2007

Gay abandon?

The edge has gone from the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival
Has gay cinema become a mere ghetto nowadays, of interest to its sexual demographic and no one else?
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | May 01, 2007

Tiger balm

And Kazuo Hara at the HFA
Here’s a sunny movie-world tale.
By GERALD PEARY | April 09, 2007

Boston in Austin

Black Helicopter’s trip to South by Southwest
There were 26 bands from Massachusetts in Austin last week to play the South by Southwest music conference Black Helicopter, "Buick Electra" (mp3)
By JEFF BREEZE | March 20, 2007

Where it was

Boston Movie Tours gets wheels
As a wee lad, Jeff Coveney went down to the sea on Martha’s Vineyard in search of where Steven Spielberg and crew shot bits of Jaws . “Where’s the beach?” he remembers shouting out.
By GERALD PEARY | August 02, 2006

Last man standing

Plus Judy Stone’s stellar interviews and Look Both Ways
Here’s my favorite movie trivia question: what living film director can claim the earliest extant film? The answer: Portugal’s Manoel de Oliveira, born in 1908 and still directing.
By GERALD PEARY | July 19, 2006

The Omen

Why?
Gus Van Sant might have had theoretical reasons for his painstaking remake of Psycho , but what’s director John Moore’s excuse?
By PETER KEOUGH | June 07, 2006

Seven heaven

Readers speak out on the best directors
Who are the world’s greatest living narrative filmmakers, what I call the Magnificent Seven?
By GERALD PEARY | April 28, 2006

Stoned

Docudrama reminiscent of Last Days and Backbeat
Stephen Woolley, producer of Absolute Beginners and The Crying Game , takes a turn directing with this docudrama about Brian Jones, the enigmatic fop who helped found the Rolling Stones and later died an ignominious death.
By TOM MEEK | April 11, 2006

The ultimate BROADCAST JOURNALIST movies

Movies . . . one profession at a time
Judging from the handful of movies made on the subject, filmmakers have little apparent use for the television business.
By RYAN STEWART | March 10, 2006