A mesmerizing film that will stay with you long after you have left the theatre, Beasts of the Southern Wild is an intimate story set in a world on the edge of disaster.

  Film Critic Jean Oppenheimer writes about films of interest to our audience. The Artist captured my heart so completely last year that when I learned Oscar-winning actor Jean Dujardin had been passed over for the French Cesar, I responded with outrage. Who could possibly have given a better performance? Now I know. And while I think “better” and “best” are meaningless constructs in this instance, it’s hard to quarrel with the French Academy’s choice. Omar Sy, who took home the statuette for The Intouchables…

Writers Bloc is delighted to host reviews by film critic Jean Oppenheimer, who writes about films of interest to our audience. Grand Illusion, Jean Renoir’s great, pacifist film of 1937, isn’t just one of the most outstanding anti-war films ever made; it is one of the best films ever made — a work whose beauty lies in the quiet and quietly transcendent sense of humanity that infuses it. This year, the movie’s 75th anniversary, is being celebrated with the release of a beautiful new print.…

Film critic Jean Oppenheimer gives us a run-down of highlights of the upcoming City of Lights, City of Angeles Film Festival. Lovers of French cinema, listen up.  The 16th annual City of Lights, City of Angels (COLCOA) Film Festival opens at the Directors Guild this coming Monday, April 16, and runs through the 23rd. For those unfamiliar with this fantastic event, it is a weeklong smorgasbord of recent French films –- thrillers, dramas, comedies — almost all of them released in France in 2011. This…

We are delighted to announce that Jean Oppenheimer, Los Angeles correspondent for American Cinematographer and other publications, will submit film reviews to our website.

A great  contemporary western.   A buddy film with a most unlikely pair of buddies. A cop movie that pits good against brazen, unapologetic evil. The Guard, a new Irish film written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, is audaciously funny as it explores corruption, integrity and heroism.  Starring Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges) and Don Cheadle, The Guard revels in its genre-bending and self-mocking, and glides into epic territory as it tells the story of a local cop in County Galway who finds himself in the…