recent posts

about: Regina Weinreich

Category: Film

  • Hamptons Journal: Michael Shannon Stars in 99 Homes / Chess in the Schools

    Last week, at a special screening at Guild Hall, Michael Shannon spoke about his work on 99 Homes, a feature directed by Ramin Bahrani about the housing crash, specifically dramatizing the horror to families as their homes are reclaimed by those from whom they were offered home loans in the housing boom. Michael Shannon plays…

  • Marlon Brando Speaks for Himself: Listen to Me Marlon Premieres

    The visually sumptuous documentary, Listen to Me Marlon, made a big impression at this year’s New Direction/ New Films Festival. Especially noted was director Stevan Riley’s achievement in making a biopic about a great subject, Marlon Brando, who, despite having died in 2004, nevertheless comes fully alive in his own voice. Eschewing most documentary apparatus, talking…

  • Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation Premieres in the Hamptons

    Introducing the latest in the franchise, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, to an East Hampton audience that included Rudy Guiliani, Lorne Michaels, Matt Lauer, Gayle King, Dan Abrams, Christie Brinkley, Alec Baldwin, who plays it straight as CIA boss Alan Hunley, quipped about how it works to be in a big budget Hollywood movie: they need you…

  • Woody Allen’s Irrational Man: Fantasies of the Perfect Murder

    Woody Allen revealed, at a pre premiere press panel for his new movie, Irrational Man, that he has fantasies of strategizing the perfect murder – in art, of course, as in Dreiser’s An American Tragedy or Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, epic novels or Macbeth and Hitchcock: “I love to see it. It’s fun to make…

  • Amy Schumer Triumphs in Trainwreck

    “This is the best night of my life,” Amy Schumer addressed the exuberant crowd at Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday for the world premiere of her romantic comedy, Trainwreck. Director Judd Apatow stood nearby feeding the comedienne lines, reminding her to thank Universal and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, hosts of the spectacular launch,…

  • Ian McKellan in Mr. Holmes: How British is It?

    Introducing his new movie, Mr. Holmes, at MoMa in which he plays Sherlock Holmes as you have never seen him, Ian McKellan called this the “quintessential” British story, as told by Americans: Jeffrey Hatcher’s screenplay from Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind, and directed by Bill Condon. “The British never had a chance.”…

  • Elizabeth Swados’ One Shade of Gray: My Depression (The Up and Down and Up of It) on HBO

    Even though this is a serious matter, Elizabeth Swados makes you feel the levity of depression. And more, you can handle it. In one scene in the animated HBO documentary, My Depression (The Up and Down and Up of It) based upon her 2005 book, you visit a supermarket stocked with “Fresh Doubt,” “Malaise,” and…

  • Alec Baldwin Shows Up for Summerdocs: William F. Buckley vs. Gore Vidal on Television in Best of Enemies

    The first of three documentaries in the Hamptons International Film Festival’s Summerdocs series hosted by Alec Baldwin, Best of Enemies was sure to be a hit with the East Hampton crowd. Featuring a historic event of verbal jousting between two well matched public intellectuals, men who could turn a phrase, the conservative William F. Buckley…

  • Arthamptons Lifetime Achievement Award: Ruth Appelhof at the Maidstone

    Just prior to the Arthamptons opening, I met with Ruth Appelhof, Executive Director of Guild Hall, who will receive the Arthamptons Lifetime Achievement Award on July 5. Over eggs Benedict at the Maidstone in East Hampton, we talked about her background in the arts, accomplishments at Guild Hall over her 16-year tenure, how things get…

  • Kate Winslet in A Little Chaos

    Kate Winslet in a smart ponytail and slinky black skimmer posed for selfies with fans as I approached MoMA this week for the New York premiere screening of her new film, A Little Chaos, directed by Alan Rickman. Finally prying herself loose from the crowd she joined the audience for this period piece in which…

  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Julie Taymor’s Splendid Shakespearean Romp in Film

    Julie Taymor’s latest triumph is the movie version of the play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she debuted in 2013 at the Theater for a New Audience in Brooklyn. Her film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is a mesmerizing and indeed, dream vision composed of the Shakespeare’s scenes and characters, made into a surreal at times,…

  • A Fashion Elite Turns Out for The True Cost, A Documentary About What We Wear

    If the title of the compelling documentary, The True Cost, directed by Andrew Morgan, sounds a little mercantile, it is. Dealing with the dreadful reality behind “fast fashion,” the greed behind low cost clothes, the exploitation of a work force in underdeveloped countries, and the marketing of unnecessary, non-biodegradable, expendable tee-shirts and other splurge purchases to a population…

  • Alicia Vikander: Testament of Youth Premieres

    Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, the famed memoir of the author’s time as a nurse during World War I, is now a major motion picture perfectly poised for summer. Leave it to David Heyman, the producer of the Harry Potter films, to put this book on screen. Heyman seems to specialize in coming of age…

  • Lauryn Hill at the Apollo: Celebrating Nina Simone

    You know the old joke: how do you get to Carnegie Hall? For jazz giant Nina Simone, it took more than practice. A classical piano prodigy, Simone, nee Eunice Waymon, was denied entrance to the Curtis Institute of Music, and could not be booked in clubs even after she showed she had the chops: she…

  • Ann Roth Honored at NYWFT’s Designing Women

    Even though she loves awards, Meryl Streep did not show up to introduce Ann Roth at last night’s New York Women in Film & Television’s Designing Women evening, where the legendary costume designer was being honored for lifetime achievement. At a Roth tribute at the Hamptons Film Festival in 2013, the actress who had been…

  • Blythe Danner and Sam Elliott: Hot in I’ll See You in my Dreams

    Blythe Danner is a sublime and funny actress, as we’ve seen in the Meet the Focker comedies, and decades of movies and stage plays. In I’ll See You in my Dreams, she’s the femme fatale of the geriatric set, sure to make you rethink 70. Vibrant, with it, her character Carol sings karaoke, plays golf,…

  • Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy Premieres at MoMA, Again

    MoMA’s Titus I theater looked like a gathering for New York filmmakers and artists on Monday night: Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig, Jim Jarmusch, Laurie Anderson, Hal Willner, Gay Talese, and others, many of whom had already seen the Apu Trilogy as Satyajit Ray’s masterwork is called. They were there to see part 1, PATHER…

  • Montclair Film Festival: Expanding in its 4th Year

    Film festivals flourish in beautiful places. The Montclair Film Festival in Montclair, New Jersey, now at its midpoint, adds to that rule, expanding to ten days, and inaugurating awards for filmmaking in memory of two Montclair residents who died this year: New York Times media writer David Carr, and documentary filmmaker Bruce Sinofsky.

  • Iris Premieres at the Paris Theater

    Orange would not be the new black for Iris Apfel, who wore that color in fur for the movie premiere of Iris last week at the Paris Theater: the brighter the better, it was practically neon, and contrasted with saucer-sized turquoise beads. The outfit would be unusual for anyone, let alone the 93 year old…

  • Robert Redford Honored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center: “Hello, Gorgeous”

    Barbra Streisand, presenting the 42nd Chaplin Award to Robert Redford, her co-star in The Way We Were, recounted a story about a fan screaming “Hello, Gorgeous.” She thought it was for her, for Funny Girl. But no, the “gorgeous” was for Robert Redford. Indeed, there was no elephant-in-the-room in the spacious Alice Tully Hall: every…

  • Doctor Zhivago’s Sound

    The musical based on that Russian classic Doctor Zhivago inevitably evokes comparisons with the Omar Shariff-Julie Christie, David Lean 1965 movie, from Boris Pasternak’s 1957 novel. A Broadway show with name recognition, Doctor Zhivago has played in Australia and South Korea—in Korean—and was much loved. Given its politics, that’s a coup. Les Miserables Russian style,…

  • At Lunch With Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts

    La Grenouille experienced a British invasion yesterday for a lunch celebrating the film Far From the Madding Crowd, based on Thomas Hardy’s beloved 19th century novel. Carey Mulligan, currently starring in Skylight on Broadway, plays Bathsheba Everdene, a strong-willed and occasionally wrong-headed heroine, a pre-feminist, you could call her. Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts portrays Gabriel…

  • Sarasota Film Festival: A Juror’s Journal

    As film festivals go, Sarasota Film Festival is hard to beat, for films, parties, and people. In addition to the awards listed below, Jane Seymour spoke about her career in film with Regina Weinreich, representing her latest, Bereave, directed by Evangelos and George Giovanis. Rachel Weisz, spoke with David Edelstein about her work producing Radiator,…

  • Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind: Opening Night at the Sarasota Film Festival

     A favorite at film festivals throughout the fall, the movie Time Out of Mind, stars one of the great cinematic heartthrobs, Richard Gere. “Lord have mercy,” exclaims one of the retirees in the recent Best Marigold Hotel sequel when Gere’s silver haired character enters the room. Of course we all fell in love with him…

  • William F. Buckley vs. Gore Vidal: Television’s Verbal Fisticuffs

    In an age when a coinage such as “frenemies” has meaning, the operative word in the title of a new documentary, Best of Enemies, is the word “best.” The film, about a particular historic event of verbal jousting, is between two very well matched public intellectuals, “best” practitioners of the English language of their time,…