SFChronicle3d
An epic Oscar-contending movie with Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce was made for less than $10 million. Here’s how
Brady Corbet’s ambitious “The Brutalist,” about a post-World War II architect, challenges the way Hollywood makes movies.
SFChronicle6d
Review: In ‘Porcelain War,’ Ukrainian artists document their struggle against Russian aggression
As Slava Leontyev, his wife and artistic partner Anya Stasenko and their little dog Frodo walk through a bucolic, flower-dappled field while smoke and sirens rise in the distance, he notes that ...
SFChronicle6d
Karissa Chen mines love, hardship and loss in the shadow of the Chinese Civil War and beyond
When Karissa Chen was going through her grandparents’ belongings after their death, she found a photograph of her grandfather. He was standing in front of a grave, weeping. The grave belonged to his ...
SFChronicle7d
‘Nickel Boys’ director chooses first-person perspective in showing cruelties of a Southern reform school
When filmmaker RaMell Ross first read “The Nickel Boys,” Colson Whitehead’s harrowing 2019 novel about two teenage boys, Elwood and Turner, who meet at an abusive reform school in 1960s Florida, he ...
SFChronicle7d
Review: ‘Don’t Die’ finds the man behind the tech mogul’s longevity experiments
We’ve grown used to super-rich tech bros exposing their strange, sometimes alarming obsessions. But even in a world of Elon Musks and Peter Thiels, Bryan Johnson pops up as exceptionally weird. “Don’t ...
SFChronicle7d
‘Porcelain War’ follows artists who choose art despite war
Documentary co-directors Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev follow three Ukrainian artists who chose to stay while a brutal war raged in their home country. A porcelain owl by Anya Stasenko and Slava ...
SFChronicle7d
Mick LaSalle: Cinema’s mysterious spirits capture the essence of time
American inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) examining motion picture film threaded through one of his film projectors. Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images Thomas Edison’s experiments with moving ...