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about: Regina Weinreich

Category: Film

  • Mary Kay Place Stars in Diane: Indie Gem at the Tribeca Film Festival

    The movie Diane happens to be about a woman of a certain age, played to perfection by Mary Kay Place, in one of the most compelling performances of the year. Diane happens to be based on writer/director Kent Jones’ mother, dealing with friends and family around her in dramatic circumstance or dying, and a son…

  • Rory Kennedy Premieres her NASA Documentary for Sarasota Film Festival’s Awesome Closing Night

    Planet Earth was the star of the Sarasota Film Festival’s closing night film, Rory Kennedy’s Above and Beyond: NASA’s Journey to Tomorrow, just in time for Earth Day. Following up on an aspirational speech given by her uncle, President John F. Kennedy, about going to the moon at Rice University, Kennedy’s documentary tells the history…

  • At Lunch with Priscilla Presley: HBO’s Elvis Presley: The Searcher

    At lunch at the Rainbow Room recently, Priscilla Presley joined a panel of Elvis experts, journalists and filmmakers to illuminate "The King's" rags to riches career. Certainly an American original, Elvis Presley was a dreamboat to teens when he first began to sing, swiveling his hips on the Ed Sullivan Show. Of course they famously…

  • Sarasota Film Festival Celebrates 20

    “In our 20th year, we have more films than ever,” Mark Famiglio, Chairman and President of the Sarasota Film Festival said in a phone interview about the two-week event now underway until April 22. While many beautiful locations world over can boast of a film festival, SFF is often noted as a well-kept secret for…

  • Scary Movies: A Quiet Place and The China Hustle

    “This is a family story,” described John Krasinski at the premiere of his latest directorial effort, A Quiet Place. But isn’t this a horror movie? Krasinski stars alongside his life partner, as he refers to his wife Emily Blunt for this fresh take on a classic nail biter, featuring a family’s attempt at survival in…

  • Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs: Yelps Against the Empire

    At the Metropolitan Museum this week it was easy to forget that Wes Anderson’s brilliant new movie, Isle of Dogs, is animated. Oracle, a pint-sized pug, announces snow is on the way, and she was right. New York was bracing for another blizzard, its fourth of the season. That’s a tall blond woman, you think…

  • Arthur Miller: Writer, A Documentary Directed by his Daughter, Rebecca Miller

    Back in the day, Rose Styron, the writer and wife of William Styron, recounted the story of an American delegation of authors visiting Rio, among them her friend the playwright Arthur Miller. Local headlines focused on Miller, the husband of Marilyn Monroe. In this rich documentary of her father, Rebecca Miller addresses the matter of…

  • Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, and Mathieu Amalric

    Hollywood can learn a thing or two from the French, its film industry and joie de vivre. Mathieu Amalric, attending this year’s Rendez-vous with French Cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual popular series in collaboration with Unifrance, presented his film Barbara, homage to a chanteuse, not so famous anywhere but France. Best known…

  • Waiting for Alec Baldwin at the Guild Hall Gala

    Yes, G. E. Smith previewed Guild Hall’s first annual guitar masters festival, to take place in July, but that was not the only music at this year’s winter celebration of Guild Hall. Honored for her career in the visual arts, Audrey Flack, brought her History of Art band to The Rainbow Room to perform her…

  • Athena Honors J. J. Abrams, Bridget Everett, Amma Asante, and Barbara Kopple

    Dedicated to celebrating courageous and audacious women leaders, the Athena Film Festival captures the Zeitgeist. Under the auspices of Barnard College, Athena honored J. J. Abrams, presenting him an Athena Leading Man award, among its stellar women in film honorees this year, Amma Asante, Athena Breakthrough awardee Bridget Everett, and Barbara Kopple its Laura Ziskin…

  • Liz Smith: Remembering a “Natural Blonde”

    AAt the Majestic Theater last week, Renee Zellweger called her Blondie and Tommy Tune sang “The Way You Look Tonight” with pictures of him dancing the “East Texas Push” with her, but that was not the showstopper at Liz Smith’s memorial: The distinction went to a video of Liz crooning “I’m an Old Cowhand, from the…

  • Oscar Nods: Sharing and Sparing the Love

    When the category of Best Picture swells to nine, you can be sure that your favorites will be covered. Throughout “the season,” prognosticators haggled –with one another and themselves– over the supremacy of The Shape of Water over Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, Lady Bird over Get Out, Dunkirk over The Darkest Hour. An excellent…

  • Meditating with Naomi Watts at Saks Fifth Avenue

    Amidst the racks of multi-colored Missonis on Saks 4th floor, Shiva Rose led a meditation, a prelude to a panel featuring Naomi Watts, cover girl on the winter issue of Purist, the wellness themed brainchild of Cristina Cuomo. Just sitting with eyes closed, to a guided breathing contrasted with the commerce, bright lights and bustle of the store. And…

  • Michael Moore’s Latest Cause: One of Us: Jews in Revolt

    Okay, Michael Moore is not Jewish, but he’s a menschy guy who cannot abide injustice. Co-hosting—with Fran Leibowitz— a post-screening party for Netflix’s documentary, One of Us, this week at the Waverly Inn, the Oscar winning documentarian and recent Broadway star could not restrain his indignation at the plight of Etty, an Orthodox Jewish woman…

  • Jerry Garcia, American Hero: Long Strange Trip

    Weighing in at a cool four hours, Amir Bar-Lev’s epic documentary Long Strange Trip records the artistic journey of an American band over decades of cultural change, but it also illuminates the personality of a kind of American hero only America could produce. The band itself, The Grateful Dead, were sloppy and spontaneous, or blissful…

  • Lance Armstrong on Doping: Icarus

    The evening was not unusual. Just a screening of a documentary, Icarus, for a roomful of leading documentarians: Academy Award winning ones like Alex Gibney and Barbara Kopple among many others, for purposes of Oscar nominations. The unusual part was having Lance Armstrong participate in the post-screening panel at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge. The movie,…

  • From Saoirse Ronan to Tiffany Haddish: Girl Power at the New York Film Critics Circle Award

    No one had to complain about anyone’s misconduct, not sexual anyway, at last night’s New York Film Critics Circle Awards dinner at Tao in the meatpacking. Every honoree, including the great Molly Haskell who picked up the group’s Special Career Achievement Award for her lifetime of serious reviewing, actresses Saoirse Ronan and Tiffany Haddish, and…

  • Daniel Day-Lewis’ Kinky Pleasure in Phantom Thread

    A dressmaker’s model can be erotic, or comic. Just look at the women who wear the extravagant frocks designed by Reynolds Woodcock as played to austere perfection by Daniel Day-Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Phantom Thread. You have Barbara Rose, a wealthy rotund patron with the great Harriet Harris in the role, and you…

  • Annette Bening’s Mega Speech at the Museum of the Moving Image Tribute

    When Warren Beatty was honored by the Museum of the Moving Image last year, his wife Annette Bening, the star of Mike Mills’ Twentieth Century Women gave a speech. This year, with Annette Bening as tributee, Warren Beatty rose to the occasion, introducing the clip for Bening’s work in his Bugsy, which just happens to…

  • Peter Sarsgaard in Wormwood: Acting with Errol Morris

    “Every time you make a documentary,” said Errol Morris accepting a lifetime achievement award at the 2nd Annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards ceremony in November, “you get to reinvent the form. When I sold my series, Wormwood to Netflix, I sold it as the Everything Bagel.” This week, at a celebration for Wormwood at the…

  • Tina Fey and Don Katz Honored at the New York Stage and Film Winter Gala

    Comedian Tina Fey and Don Katz founder and CEO of Audible, Inc. were honored by New York Stage and Film at their winter gala this week. Attending the dinner at Pier Sixty with the hope of scoring some tickets to Hamilton—yes, still—I was soon apprised that the bidding for them started at $4,000. I could…

  • The Shape of Water Premieres: Guillermo del Toro’s Fairy Tale for Grownups

    “Fairy tales are not for children,” said Guillermo del Toro, introducing his fabulous film The Shape of Water at a special screening this week. “They were created during times of war, pestilence, famine,” he went on, explaining the oft occurrence of violence, mutilation, and monsters. His masterpiece, Pan’s Labyrinth, a fable seen through the eyes…

  • Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird: A Triumph of Mothers and Daughter

    It was lovely to see Saoirse Ronan win the Best Actress Gotham Award for her role as “Lady Bird”/ Christine in Greta Gerwig’s debut film as a director. Especially so, because her mother, who lives in Ireland, was present at Cipriani Wall Street, and Gerwig initially titled the film, “Mothers and Daughters.” I saw the…

  • Gotham Awards: Hold the Politics

    As film celebrations go, Monday’s IFP Gotham Awards was the quintessential New York night with many honored acknowledging their Big Apple core: tributee Dustin Hoffman recalled the days when he first arrived in the city, his recent mention in the news on the list for misconduct, blissfully omitted. With John Cameron Mitchell as M. C.,…

  • Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story: A Reflection on the Perils of Being Beautiful

    Alexandra Dean’s documentary, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, emphasizes the actress’ contribution to a world outside the shallows of Hollywood. The stunning brunette Hedy Lamarr defied the illogical adage: if a woman is beautiful surely she can’t have brains too. Then again, few people of any gender have the kind of brains Lamarr had; she was…