ARTS Pick: Getting animated at film fest

A variety of techniques, budgets and effects come together at the 19th annual Animations Show of Shows. The festival traverses themes of societal trends and modern anxieties with 16 screenings including The Burden, a quirky stop-motion short about how being trapped in a routine life makes the apocalypse seem liberating, and Everything, “a simulation of […]

Pop secret: Which movie theater’s kernels are king?

By Sam Padgett If anyone is seeking an excuse to shovel popcorn into their mouth, now is the time. October is National Popcorn Month, and in celebration of America’s favorite cinema snack, we sampled all of the popped corn that Charlottesville’s movie theaters have to offer. Here are our findings. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Rating: 5 […]

Group of friends brings on Curse of the Slasher Nurse

A group of friends goes out to a secluded cabin in the woods—no other cabins within screaming distance, one of the friends claims—for a weekend of laid-back partying. As night falls and the group gets to some slightly drunken, scary storytelling, a tale about a woman who’s broken out of a psychiatric hospital becomes a […]

Dire consequences: Al Gore’s agenda is discouraged by current climate

The impact of An Inconvenient Truth, the award-winning film released in 2006, was almost unprecedented for a documentary. There had already been a conversation around climate change, but many advocates and people generally in favor of promoting the notion that it was human-supported often lacked cohesion. One could always cite scientific consensus, but before director […]

ARTS Pick: Summer in Paris

Longing to escape the bright, hot, cheery sunshine? Violet Crown Cinema welcomes you into the dark by way of the first installment in its Summer in Paris film series. Focusing on crimes of passion and anchored by Panique, the 1946 murder mystery starring Michel Simon as a loathsome Peeping Tom framed for murder by the […]

Manchester by the Sea sails on love and loss

Tragedy and comedy are, in fact, bedfellows when both are taken very seriously, and rarely is this relationship captured as well as it is in Manchester by the Sea. Writer-director Kenneth Lonergan’s meditation on love, loss and moving on strikes this balance with ease, and it’s a masterpiece in its own right for its emotional […]

The rare quality of A Man Called Ove

Leave it to the Swedes to make a comedy-drama about an elderly widower’s unsuccessful attempts at suicide into the feel-good movie of 2016. A Man Called Ove strikes a rare balance between sardonicism and optimism, between hope and hilarious misanthropy, and succeeds thanks to excellent performances and a thoughtful story that would have drowned in […]

Warren Beatty takes on the legend of Howard Hughes

The great Warren Beatty returns after a 15-year hiatus with Rules Don’t Apply, a Howard Hughes-centered passion project that has existed in the Hollywood icon’s mind since the early 1970s. Beatty rarely commits to a project halfway, and his fascination with the subject, setting and era of the film is evident in both his performance […]