The story of Richard Kuklinski (portrayed here by Michael Shannon) is one of those true crime tales that you simply can’t believe. It’s too crazy to be true, but it also has that “made for the movies” vibe.  

The year is 1915 and France is caught up in World War I. Young men are on the front lines where injuries and death abound, but a sense of duty and responsibility inspires more to join the ranks and, those who can convalesce quickly, to return to the front as soon as possible.  

You’ve got to say this for Eli Roth: Like his filmmaking brother-in-arms Quentin Tarantino, he’s got spools of film instead of veins with blood keeping his heart a-beating, and he’s a genre geek deep in the marrow of his bones.  

The film tracks Lore (Saskia Rosendahl), the eldest of five children, the offspring of staunch Nazi supporters, who seeks to protect her siblings and stay one step ahead of the Allied troops at the end of the war.  

Steady buzz for the Cincinnati Film Society (CFS) reboot emerged from the underground thanks to recent screenings at the Northside Tavern, which have given way to a new collaboration with The Greenwich, scheduled to kick off in May with The Towering Inferno (screenings set for the first Thursday of each month).  

In filmmaking, there’s always pressure, especially around one’s first feature. Ideally, you arc your career so that you can grow as a director with each film, raising your profile as you raise your game so that when you’re ready for your big break, you’ve put in the time and have the resume and scars to prove it.  

High-end art auctioneer Simon (James McAvoy) cues us in to the ins and outs of the security necessary to protect near-priceless works of art from the would-be thugs out there with enough “muscle and nerve” to dare to burst into an auction house and steal a painting.  

The only movie I can clearly recall seeing on the West Side screen is Lady Sings the Blues in 1972. My parents were finally splitting up the same year that movie came out and I took to the darkness in movie theaters from that point on as my own private Idaho of insular thinking, mourning and disappearance. Darkness: visible.  

Film history, like art history, has tended to be fairly academic — you take a class, which uses textbooks and screens key movies in full, and dryly study the high points of cinema, from the silent era to the arrival of digital effects.   

Garrett Hedlund is going to be a star. The last time I felt this way about an actor in a less than stellar spotlight was after catching Heath Ledger in the double feature of 10 Things I Hate About You and A Knight’s Tale.