HEROES AND VILLAINS: Paul Dano as a young Brian Wilson. City Paper grade: B Nearly every biopic turns on the depiction of its subject as a tortured genius, but Brian Wilson is the rare case where both halves of that term…

Maria Pouchnikova Chasing The Bird: Composer Daniel Schnyder wrote Charlie Parker’s Yardbird with singer Lawrence Brownlee (pictured) in mind. It could be said that the only time Charlie Parker ever truly felt comfortable during his brief, tragic life was when…

OLD SKULL: H.R. Giger is the subject of Belinda Sallin’s dark documentary. City Paper grade: C H.R. Giger’s first words to the camera in Belinda Sallin’s documentary are spoken with a handful of human remains: “This is the oldest skull…

City Paper grade: A Thirty years after fighting his way beyond Thunderdome, Mad Max Rockatansky is back in all his leather-clad, hyperkinetic glory. This time it’s Tom Hardy gloweringly stoically at the onslaught of a punk/S&M gearhead apocalypse instead of…

GARDEN VARIETY: Little and Big Edie Beale pose for the camera in Grey Gardens. City Paper grade: A Despite a career that spanned six decades, it was inevitable that when Albert Maysles died last month, two films would dominate the…

City Paper grade: C- Well, it worked for Roberto Benigni. Italian TV host and comedian Pierfrancesco “Pif” Diliberto doesn’t mug as egregiously as Benigni, and the legacy of Mafia assassinations in Diliberto’s native Palermo isn’t as tasteless a backdrop as…

On a recent Throwback Thursday, PRISM Quartet members posted a list of the band’s repertoire from its early years. The list of material is remarkably short, with a handful of jazz pieces and transcriptions of classical favorites, a range of…

City Paper grade: B- Dogs rise up to wreak vengeance on their human abusers in the Hungarian Cannes prizewinner White God, which strikes an uneasy balance between gritty social realism and B-movie animal attack thriller. For its first 20 minutes,…

City Paper grade: C- Some variation of the phrase “This is a true story” has opened countless films, with varying degrees of reliability. Those words are the first thing we see in Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter as well, but with…