The Washington West Film Festival has come once again to its home in Northern Virginia, playing new documentaries, shorts and feature films through Sunday. With the tag line "Story Can Change the World," WWFF is unique in all the festival circuit by donating 100 percent of all profits every year to a charity.  This year they will aid in Hurricane Sandy relief.   This year's showings are in Reston Town Center, Reston's Center Stage and at the Angelika Mosaic Film Center in Merrifield.   Cinema Siren is on the jury to vote for the best documentary feature, so I won't say yet what I think of …

PARIS — This week, Cinema Siren is writing from France, land of unpasteurized cheese, Jerry Lewis obsession, well-behaved dogs in restaurants and a great appreciation of auteur film directors. I'm here for the opening of a Star Wars toy exhibit at the Louvre that involves some film art friends of mine.   Nowhere would there be a better place to speak of the gorgeous piece of animated film-making that is Frankenweenie than where there is in fact no literal translation for "director's cut," because it wouldnt occur to the French that there would be any other version of a film. Tim Burton is …

  Looper is an ambitious and deeper take on time-travel and the future than the usual sci-fi action flick, and if approached with patience and an open mind, it will blow yours away at least as much as the oft-featured blunderbuss in the film. It starts slowly. In fact, it maintains a decidedly European style in its ambiguity and attention to character detail. Although the fashion in France and greater Europe of late has been toward all flash and no substance (Banlieu 13, The Horde), Looper recalls the type of art house vibe that made Blade Runner, for example, the top of its genre.  There are…

The box office for last weekend is in, and it is an interesting statement on the need for escapism that Resident Evil: Retribution (the fifth in a franchise I once upon a time very much enjoyed) roundhouse kicked Finding Nemo 3D at the box office, with $21 million to Nemo's $16.6 million in ticket sales.  While it is true that Nemo is a movie many have already seen, it also boasts a 99 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a rating few movies of any kind attain, while the most recent trip back deep into the bowels of the Umbrella Corporation starring Milla Jovovich fighting brainless zombies …

If Cinema Siren had a dime for every time a perfectly down-to-earth average adult said Finding Nemo is one of their favorite movies, I might have a yacht as big as Steven Spielberg's. The Siren knows animation. Alter ego Leslie Combemale owns a gallery that has specialized in animation and film art for 19 years. When I say "I know Nemo," I mean I've seen it at least 20 times, and have met and spoken to Pixar animators and directors many times. I remember the way they spoke of Finding Nemo in hushed tones in 2003, just before it was released. The artists knew they had something spectacular. It…

"Moonrise Kingdom" is coming to theaters in a much wider release this Friday.  Cinema Siren places this film as one of the top of 2012, and shows in this case the director's genius for creating a mythic, nostalgic world vaguely tethered to reality that is thoroughly engaging and wholly charming.   Wes Anderson's latest and best effort stars two newcomers as young lovers running away together who must be found before a historic storm reaches landfall on the isolated island that is their 1965 home. Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray and Frances McDormand are all players in the ensemble …

In Greek mythology, Prometheus got in big trouble for handing over the secret of fire to mere mortals. In modern day, he represents the quest for human knowledge and achievement. Of course, he wound up tied to a rock and having an eagle peck his guts out every day. Apparently the team who embarks on their own quest for knowledge in the spacecraft that supplies the title of Ridley Scott's highly anticipated new film hadn't gotten the foreshadowing memo. For them, asking questions about human origin, and actively seeking answers, is the beginning of Bad Things happening, but then we audience …