What a pleasure it is to watch Tom Hanks give a remarkable performance of untapped emotional depths in Captain Phillips. One of America’s most beloved actors, with a mostly sturdy career and a reputation as a modern day Jimmy Stewart, he finally found a vehicle worthy of his verisimilitude as a performer. If you look […]
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GRAVITY New Movie Review
A group of kids from Maui were sent to Space Camp in 1989, where they spent a week at the training facility in Huntsville Alabama, learning how to operate spacecraft. I was one of those kids. It was a pivotal event in my young life, as I seriously wanted, at the time, to become an […]
RUSH New Movie Review
The 1976 Formula One championship remains a memorable season for racing fans, mostly due to the visibly edgy relationship between two of its top competitors. The handsome James Hunt was as reckless and carefree in his life as he was taking daredevil turns on the racetrack. He won victories for his ability behind a steering […]
Talking Story With SHORT TERM 12 Filmmaker Destin Cretton About Movies And His Maui Upbringing
Haiku isn’t known to be the birthplace of great filmmakers, but that’s about to change, permanently. Local boy Destin Cretton grew up there and his dreams of becoming a high caliber filmmaker have come true in a profound way. His critically acclaimed comedy/drama Short Term 12 stars Brie Larson as a worker at a foster […]
SHORT TERM 12 New Movie Review
The miracle of Maui native Destin Cretton’s Short Term 12 is that it features dozens of young actors in the main cast and not one of them ever appears to be acting. While the film is a semi-comic look at the day-to-day experiences of young teens staying at a foster care facility and the barely […]
RIDDICK New Movie Review
As a child, I used to play with my Star Wars action figures every chance I got. My parents sensed my enthusiasm for The Force, so Christmas morning at my house was like an annual unveiling of the latest action figure George Lucas commissioned. I’d go over to my pal John’s house and we’d stage […]
BLUE JASMINE New Movie Review
Frequently, when reading about how corporate fat cats who send their careers and billion dollar businesses crashing down through fraud and financial deception, there’s always one commonly recurring detail. While the articles would focus mostly on the likes of Bernie Madoff or Ivan Boesky, the subject of their wives eventually comes up. More times than […]
THE WORLDS END New Movie Review
Gary (played by Simon Pegg) wants to relive the glories of the 1990s so badly that he reunites his old high school chums and band members, coercing them into recreating a legendary pub crawl from their youth. Problem is, Gary is in rehab, a delusional burnout and his former buddies don’t really like him. In […]
YOURE NEXT New Movie Review
It happens at least once a year. A horror film premieres at a film festival and emerges surrounded by such buzz that it becomes a gotta-see-it phenomenon. The problem is you can’t always trust the word of mouth from an audience. I once suffered through a horror fest screening of Chillerama, a movie even the […]
THE LONE RANGER New Movie Review
A better title would have been The Mighty Tonto and His Uninteresting, Whiny Masked Sidekick, but I’m getting ahead of myself. In this adaptation of the classic radio serial, Armie Hammer plays a bumbling lawman who pursues a dastardly villain (William Fichtner, effectively nasty) and learns to become a desert warrior through the help of […]
WORLD WAR Z New Movie Review
A feeling of paranoid nostalgia swept across me during a screening of World War Z. An hour into the movie, which I caught with my family at the Queen Ka’ahumanu Theater, someone in the audience coughed. This is not what you want to hear when the movie in question is a virus-oriented horror movie. It […]
SHORT TERM 12 From Maui Boy Destin Cretton Screens At Maui Film Fest
Four coworkers mingle outside on a sunny day, as one of them regales their newest member with a humorous work story. Suddenly, a young boy bursts from the building behind them, screaming and running fast. The storytelling stops and the workers immediately begin the chase, catching up with the boy and bringing him to the […]
Your Guide To The Maui Film Festival Galas And Parties
This year the Maui Film Festival celebrates 14 years of joining the film industry with our island culture. And Hawaii will be at the forefront, with the festival starting with the debut screening of Hawaiian: The Legend of Eddie Aikau by Sam George at the Celestial Cinema, as well as a Visionary Award presentation for […]
AFTER EARTH New Movie Review
Picking on a bad movie can be a lot of fun for film critics, a form of “revenge” that justifies having suffered through a cinematic turkey. The word was out on M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth not long before release: accusations of being a vanity project for co-star and co-producer Will Smith and another unfortunate […]
Hawaiian Legend Eddie Aikau Lives On In A Big New Documentary Film Premiering At The Maui Film Festival
Go to the official webpage of the annual Quiksilver In Memory of Eddie Aikau surf contest and you’ll find three curious but telling words: “WHO IS EDDIE?” Clicking on the question takes you to a page full of words and pictures, dedicated to the man whose name now adorns one of the biggest surf contests […]
Manao Radio Benefit and The Neverminds and The Taiko Festival and The Maui Film Festival
THURSDAY, JUNE 6 ISLAND ENERGY INQUIRY – In the drive to explore renewable energy sources, Maui Economic Development Board’s Women In Technology (WIT) program, along with the Office of Naval Research, is announcing a new summer Island Energy Inquiry educator workshop. The curriculum explores wind, solar and geothermal energy resources. Science, math and CTE teachers […]