This weekend sees the introduction of Transmutative Cinema, a free film series with a fondness for outsider independent movies that provide more questions than answers. The series, which runs most Saturday and Sunday nights at the Alchemist Theatre and Lounge, debuts tonight with a 10 p.m. screening of the 2006 drama Apart From That, which charts a seemingly unrelated ensemble of characters, including an...

In 1964, the time of Doubt, no one spoke of pedophile priests, even if the Roman Catholic Church was already riddled with them. Directed by John Patrick Shanley from his own play, one of the most provocative recent productions on a Broadway that has surrendered to the tourist trade, Doubt is true to its title. Neither an exercise in moral certainty nor an easy story for armchair ethicists, Doubt investigates the blurry line between perception and reality...

I and a number of other people recently received an email from local actor Cesar Gamino. There wasn’t much in it. He’d mentioned recently completing work on the following short promo for the United Adworkers 208—the local end of a marketing communications union: Clever. Evidently, he’s also recently finished work on a short film called The Violinist,which apparently filmed ...

Was it Orson Welles who introduced the long, dining-room table with husband and wife at opposite ends as visual shorthand for marital discord? In The Duchess, the device is used repeatedly. At first, the Duke (Ralph Fiennes) and Duchess (Keira Knightley) of Devonshire are seated across from each other, separated by a long, polished surface sparingly set with a few china serving dishes.

The first sound is of pounding hooves and the first sight is of three horsemen hurrying over the crest of a dun-colored hill, framed by the wooden gate to a ranch in desolate country. The city marshal and his deputies have come to arrest one of the hired hands for rape and murder, but the landowner, a man called Bragg (Jeremy Irons), stands firm.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, a psychological mystery staring Jimmy Stewart, tanked upon its initial release, but over the years the film was re-discovered as a sort of “lost Hitchcock film,” if not a “lost Hitchcock masterpiece.” It doesn’t provide the popcorn thrills that many of Hitch’s best flicks do, but even casual fans of classic cinema will want to see it on the big screen to appreciate the film’s grand sets, gorgeous colors and...

Though it doesn’t deviate from the franchise’s formula—teenagers have fun, then get slaughtered—Part III may be the best installment of the mostly interchangeable Friday the 13th movies. It’s certainly one of the most lively, memorable for not only being the one where increasingly immortal mass murderer Jason Voorhees discovers his beloved hockey mask, but also for being the only installment filmed in 3D. Making the...

Though it doesn’t deviate from the franchise’s formula—teenagers have fun, then get slaughtered—Part III may be the best installment of the mostly interchangeable Friday the 13th movies. It’s certainly one of the most lively, memorable for not only being the one where increasingly immortal mass murderer Jason Voorhees discovers his beloved hockey mask, but also for being the only installment filmed in 3D. Making the most of the (still pretty impressive) technology, the filmmakers miss no opportunities to fling items at the...

Spike Lee has been fighting World War II long before the release of his latest film, Miracle at St. Anna. His campaign began with a salvo at Clint Eastwood for excluding black faces from Flags of Our Fathers and perpetuating the assumption that blacks contributed little to the U.S. victory. It was not the movie Eastwood wanted to make and the sniping between the two directors probably served to harden Lee's resolve.

Sentenced to 15 years on charges of being too rich, the former waiter Jan Dite is finally released from prison in Communist Czechoslovakia. Squinting against the bright sunshine of freedom, Dite's re-entry into society suffers a momentary snag when the strap of his backpack catches in the iron gate that slams shut behind him.