Articles tagged: Film
A Wrongful Execution in Texas Points to the Fallibility of the Death Penalty
A new documentary, The Phantom, explores the case of Carlos DeLuna and bolsters the disturbingly convincing case that Texas executed the wrong man.
After years studying errors in death penalty cases, Columbia University law professor James Liebman wondered whether he could prove someone had been executed fo...Read More
The Western’s Long Glorification of Oppression
A quintessentially American, and Texan, film genre, the Western has mistold Texas history since its beginnings.
From the May/June 2021 issue “It just so happens we be Texicans,” says Mrs. Jorgensen, an older woman wearing her blond hair in a tight bun, to rough-an...Read More
Liz Lambert’s New Film Offers a Shallow Portrayal of a Changing Austin
‘Through the Plexi-Glass’ inadvertently portrays the Austin-based hotelier as insensitive and voyeuristic.
Liz Lambert’s new movie is a case study in why property developers shouldn’t make documentaries about gentrification. The Austin-based hotelier’s debut fi...Read More
Captivity Narrative
"News of the World" unsuccessfully tries to redeem the Western at its most harmful.
A version of this story ran in the March/April 2021 issue. More than most Westerns, News of the World is about things which no longer are. Where most entries o...Read More
A New Dallas Production Company Is Bringing Queer Horror to the Fore
Brock Cravy has had a long career working on LGBTQ2+ film and television in Texas. Now, he’s making his own rules.
When critics first asked Dallas filmmaker Brock Cravy what his debut film was about, he didn’t know how to answer. He’d been waiting to make a movie for 40 ...Read More
Pepe the Frog Mutates from a Far Right Meme Into a Lovable, Far Gone Figure in ‘Feels Good Man’
Filmmaker Giorgio Angelini, who hails from Houston, and debut director Arthur Jones teamed up for a new documentary on the internet that clarifies the current moment.
Matt Furie, a San Francisco-based cartoonist of reluctant notoriety, is a frog lover. He’s always drawn frogs: goofy frogs, peaceful frogs, frogs on bike ride...Read More
Norma McCorvey Took the Money of the Anti-Abortion Movement and Lost Herself. ‘AKA Jane Roe’ Is Her Attempt at Atonement.
In a stunning deathbed confession, the woman who made Roe v. Wade possible tried to erase years of anti-abortion activism. But the damage has already been done.
Norma McCorvey puts on a cannula and adjusts the scarf on her head. “This is my deathbed confession,” she says. McCorvey, the woman better known as Jane Roe...Read More
‘The Quarry’ Tells a Dark Morality Tale in a Modern Small Texas Town
A new film from Scott Teems, king of the Southern drama, follows a violent drifter who assumes the identity of a small-town preacher.
“You are no man of God,” a young Latino man named Valentín shouts from behind bars at a white man dressed as a minister in The Quarry. “You w...Read More
In ‘Yellow Rose,’ the American Coming-of-Age Story Finally Includes Undocumented Youth
Set in Austin, the film tracks a Filipina teen dreaming of a country music career—and fighting to keep her family together.
“I never fit in,” croons Rose Garcia in one of the early scenes of Yellow Rose. For the young protagonist—a Filipina teen who sports a cowboy hat and blow...Read More