Film International | Thinking Film Since 1973

Genius in Collaboration: The Outer Limits, Season One from Kino Lorber »

By Tony Williams. I saw my first episode of The Outer Limits on a regional independent television station in the mid-60s. Opening with the evocative credit sequence “There…

Beauty and the Dogs: Women’s Revolution in Tunisian Cinema »

By Matthew Fullerton. As Hollywood grapples with diversity issues, it is interesting to note how Tunisia, an emergent democracy since its 2011 revolution, has witnessed women filmmakers moving…

Family Values and Civic Duties: Fassbinder’s Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day »

By Jeremy Carr. Rainer Werner Fassbinder was particularly adept at transitioning between the cinema and television (and theater, for that matter), starting the crossover just a few films in…

Unlovely Spectacle: D.A. Miller on Call Me By Your Name »

By David Greven. An exchange I had with an older, straight, white academic in Film Studies serves as an instructive example of a particular phenomenon that I will…

Marcel Pagnol’s “Marseille Trilogy”: An Essential Reemerges on Criterion »

By Christopher Weedman. Among the most impressive film restorations of 2017 was Marcel Pagnol’s Marseille Trilogy (1931-36), which I reviewed last March when Janus Films screened it theatrically…

The Form and Function of a Cult Film: Deep Red by Alexia Kannas »

A Book Review Essay by Jeremy Carr. Alexia Kannas’ Deep Red (Columbia University Press, 2017), her contribution to the Wallflower Press Cultographies series, in which she takes a deep…

White Micro-aggression Against Black Film: Awards and Why They Matter »

By André Seewood. Every weekend numerous websites inform us of the short term box office grosses of various films like Star Wars: The Last Jedi which itself has raked…

“America First” or Second? – America Through a British Lens: Cinematic Portrayals 1930-2010 by James D. Stone »

A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. Captain Hornsby: “What an extraordinary fellow!” Colonel Thompson: “Well, he’s an American.” – Too Late the Hero (Robert Aldrich, 1970) This book, which…

Beyond Wishes: Bronson’s Loose Again!: On the Set with Charles Bronson by Paul Talbot »

A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. If Dr. Johnson had James Bosworth as his chronicler in the inimitable The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), so the departed…

The Enormous Gap Between Dream and Realization: Scenarios by Werner Herzog »

A Book Review Essay by John Duncan Talbird. There are snowy peaks all around, majestic crests, and the mountains tower like Holy Cathedrals. Very clear, icy, silent air, frost…

More Than a Headrush: Frank Henenlotter’s Brain Damage (1988) »

By Matthew Sorrento. After the release of his horror-comedy Re-Animator (1985), debuting filmmaker Stuart Gordon was very conscious that the film would be treated as his yardstick –…

Festival Reports

Faces and Things: 2018 Miami Festival Shorts Program »

By Gary M. Kramer. On March 10, the Miami Film Festival will premiere ten short films in two consecutive programs screening at the Tower Theater. The first program, The Things They Left Behind…

By Randy Malamud. I didn’t see the Aurora Borealis during my October visit to the Reykjavík International Film Festival, probably because I spent every night at the movies, but I did have some…

By Gary M. Kramer. The shorts programs at the 55th New York Film Festival are divided into three narrative sections: Narrative, Genre Stories, New York Stories, and there are some real gems among…

By Jordan R. Young. To vintage film enthusiasts–more than 28,000 last year–April means it’s time for the TCM Classic Film Festival. The eighth annual event took place over three days and four nights…

The Beksińskis: A Sound and Picture Album

By Alex Ramon. Now in its seventh year, Poland’s Transatlantyk Festival remains a spearheading festival in a country that, despite its current volatile political climate, doesn’t yet lack for dynamic, high-profile cultural events:…

By Robert Buckeye. Art Film Fest in Košice, Slovakia (16-24 June) provided greater opportunities for those who seek out film however they can by screening films that were seen recently and awarded at…

By Yun-hua Chen. Viennale and Thessaloniki Film Festival are two of the finest film festivals in Europe. Viennale curates the best arthouse films of the year from all major film festivals and is…

By Yun-hua Chen. Doku.Arts Essaybox and Around The World in 14 Films are embellishing Berlin’s autumn cinemascape for sure, each in its own way. The former prides itself on the curation of documentaries…

Interview

A Little Bold, and a Little Lighter: Sharon Badal on 2018 Tribeca Shorts »

By Gary M. Kramer. This year, the Tribeca Film Festival, unspooling April 18-29, features 10 competitive shorts programs curated…

By Tom Ue. The title cards of Sam Ashby’s first film The Colour of His Hair (2017) take us…

By Yun-hua Chen. Premiering at the Berlinale Generation 2018, Cobain is a film about the eponymous hero, a 15-year-old…

By Tom Ue. Produced, directed, and co-written by Roland Joffé, The Forgiven is an adaptation of Michael Ashton’s play…

By Yun-hua Chen. Shot in the southern Brazilian city Porto Alegre and directed by the duo Filipe Matzembacher and Mario…

By John Duncan Talbird. When Raoul Peck was nominated for an Oscar last year for his documentary about James…

By Gary M. Kramer. Two worthwhile narrative short films – Supermarket by Rhonda Mitrani, a Miami-based filmmaker, and Canoe…

By Ali Moosavi. Milad Alami is yet another one of the many Iranian diaspora directors working today. He was…

By Gary M. Kramer. The mono-monikered Hong Kong writer-director-producer, Scud (born Danny Chan Wan-Cheung) has been making distinctive films…

By Tom Ue. Entanglement, the latest film by director Jason James, follows the story of Ben Layten (Thomas Middleditch)…

By Ali Moosavi. Rob Reiner is one of the most successful American directors working today. However, it’s difficult to…

Tony Williams: Several of the commentators make the same case on this DVD. That is why it is so refreshing to listen...
Christopher Sharrett: Tony, an excellent accounting of this series as released by Kino Lorber. I have always found it...
Ed Kmetz: Fascinating, and Illuminating,review of Anne Bancroft and her career. I had never really appreciated the...
Vangelis Kritikos: Dear Mr. Dixon, After four years of delay,i would like to thank you about your excellent article...
Tony Williams: I believe Brigitte Helm made some 26 talking pictures from ALRAUNE (1930) directed by Richard Oswald,...

Review

A Televisual Tale of Three Cities – Television Cities: Paris, London, Baltimore by Charlotte Brunsdon »

A Book Review by Tony Williams. This concisely written and informative monograph represents a critical examination of the role cityscapes play within certain televised fictional representations. While many books exist…

Celebrating a Life Well Spent: Itzhak »

By Elias Savada. It’s fitting that this refreshing documentary starts out with the world renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman performing a rousing rendition of The Star Spangled Banner at Citi Field in…

Where is Kyra?: Women in Transition »

By Christopher Sharrett. I have no reservations about using a central, foundational handbook serving women as the subtitle to this piece (in part because my wife was co-author of the…

The Endless: Who’s Crazy Now? »

By Elias Savada. I’ve been a fan of horror maestros Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead ever since catching their 2012 feature debut Resolution at that year’s SpookyFest in Washington DC. Last…

A Genre Reclaimed: Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge »

By Alex Brannan. There is a critical stigma to the small subset of films that comprise the rape-revenge genre – or, at the very least, a healthy hesitation. In 1980, Roger…

An Archive of Indoctrination: Hitler’s Hollywood »

By Jeremy Carr. Even if there wasn’t a compelling, underlying thesis to Hitler’s Hollywood: German Cinema in the Age of Propaganda: 1933–1945, this 2017 film by Rüdiger Suchsland would still be…

Losing Touch: Ready Player One »

By Dean Goldberg. While I’ll admit that Pong was the last video game I had any interest in and more recently got sea sick when a colleague slipped goggles on my…

Unfertile Perspectives – A Green and Pagan Land: Myth, Magic and Landscape in British Film and Television by David Huckvale »

A Book Review by Tony Williams. According to an old saying about not judging a book by its cover, the same can apply both to the image on the cover…

Metafictional Examination: The Workshop »

By Travis Merchant. Recently, the rise of extreme right-wing groups and individuals have done more than upset the quotidian structure to society. More often than not, these individuals seem bent on violence and…

War’s Veiled Aftermath: 1945 »

By Jeremy Carr. On the day of her son’s wedding, presumably the central event of 1945, drug-addled Anna (Eszter Nagy-Kálózy) ominously observes, “I’ve got a bad feeling.” At the time,…

Placing Theory and Practice – Spectatorship: Shifting Theories of Gender, Sexuality and Media edited by Roxanne Samer and William Whittington »

A Book Review by Dean Goldberg. While the introduction to this collection of published essays from the storied Spectator, the University of California’s premier film journal, provides an articulate jumping…

Deceit and Inconsistency: The China Hustle »

By Travis Merchant. A decade has passed since the beginning of an economic recession that many still feel today. The recession of 2008 brought about a collapsed American market that desperately…

Max Winkler’s Flower Sour »

By Elias Savada. I didn’t like Max Winkler’s first feature, the dreary comedy Ceremony (2011), a quirky tic of a wedding crasher film. My impression of his directorial abilities hasn’t…

Andy Goldsworthy’s Landscape Art: Leaning Into the Wind »

By John Duncan Talbird. In the opening of the new documentary, Leaning Into the Wind, artist Andy Goldsworthy tours a small home in the mountains in Brazil. To Western eyes, the…

Role-Playing Writ Small: I Kill Giants »

By Elias Savada. Children dealing with their fears – although not those anxieties normally associated with horror genre tropes like The Dark, Loud Noises, and such – play a central role…

Comedy Killing Satire: The Death of Stalin »

By Jake Rutkowski. The process of interpersonal grievances and small-scale ironies rippling out into matters of national security is at this point a calling card for celebrated Scottish satirist Armando Iannucci…

A Misguided Adventure: A Wrinkle in Time »

By Elias Savada. If I were a 12-year-old girl (particularly one of color), I probably would be anxiously awaiting, with all my BFFs, the arrival of A Wrinkle in Time, the…

“Too Beautiful for Brilliance” – Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story »

By Anthony Uzarowski. Hedy Lamarr was a movie star for whom the term glamour might have been invented. As far as celluloid goddesses go, she was the crème de la crème, perhaps…

More Mood Than Mayhem: They Remain »

By Elias Savada. In case you’re not feeling enough dread after watching Natalie Portman push her way through The Shimmer in the unsettling Annihilation, there are similar aural, low-frequency bass…

More Complications: Films of the New French Extremity by Alexandra West »

A Book Review by Alex Brannan. When James Quandt coined the term “New French Extremity” in a piece for ArtForum, he referred to such a naming as something a “critic…

Pedestrian Action: 7 Guardians of the Tomb »

By Elias Savada. The Mummy was a huge, expensive flop last year, and relics of the archaeology digs genre are still up and about (Lara Croft is due back shortly). But…

By Jeremy Carr. It takes a sustained suspension of disbelief to accept what is tendered by Tomorrow is Forever. To permit the premise…

By Devapriya Sanyal. Alankrita Srivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha looks at the lives of four women who live in Hawai manzil: Bua ji, who…

A Book Review by Louis Wasser. “I’m the last of Hollywood’s dinosaurs.” – Jean Negulesco (124) Although, in retrospect, the stars seemed…

By Elias Savada. There have been plenty of movies that have skewered the sunbaked air of Los Angeles and the strange people who…

By Elias Savada. Russian-born and German-trained Alisa Berger shows off her experimental and artistic tendencies in The Astronaut’s Bodies, a graduation project…

By Elias Savada. With less than a month before we find out how many Academy Awards The Shape of Water will actually win,…

By Gary M. Kramer. The best short films hook viewers, carry them through the story, and deliver a surprising finish. Animation is…

A Book Review by Anthony Uzarowski. In the 1950s female movie stars were expected to be more than human. For a price…

By Elias Savada. When 46-year-old automobile mechanic Tony George Hanna (a piercing-eyed Adel Karam) is first seen in The Insult, he’s at an…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. Ripping England is the latest of two recent studies by American academics devoted to aspects of…

A Book Review by Robert Buckeye. In Jean-Luc Godard’s Les Carabainares (1963), a soldier at a cinema for the first time sees a…

By Christopher Sharrett. I hope that Steven Spielberg’s The Post ignites more interest in the standard media, at a time when blogs…

By Elias Savada. Christmas comes but once a year, but folks who like the holiday’s sweet joy and heartfelt message might take a…

By Elias Savada. Nicolas Cage, like Bruce Willis, seems to be trying everything and anything to reinvent his career. Or find a wider…

A Book Review by Louis J. Wasser. “I’m always lonely when I work…You’re going through a very private inner experience that requires personal…

By Christopher Sharrett. I’ve kept in mind Luca Guadagnino since his 2009 film I Am Love, which made such good use of…

By John Duncan Talbird. “Everything under the sun is art,” Joseph Beuys famously – or fatuously, depending on your point of view –…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. Upon reviewing Ingrid Pitt, Queen of Horror: The Complete Career (McFarland, 2018, revised from a 2010…

By Elias Savada. Little did Elton John realize that the filmmakers behind Crazy Famous, a lame adventure comedy set in an Upstate New…

By Dean Goldberg. Like many a baby-boomer it was television that brought the movies into my life and introduced me to the…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. “I hate Spielberg, because none of his movies are honest…He is fascist, because America is the…

By Christopher Sharrett. The release last season of Darren Aronovsky’s Mother! was the unfortunate occasion for another assessment of the American mind. The…

A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. A history of soviet cinema, encompassing the films of Russia as well as the non-Russian former…

By Jeremy Carr. Young Haya is having a rough time. At the beginning of the documentary Miss Kiet’s Children, this precocious primary school…

By Elias Savada. When Guillermo del Toro makes a film, people take notice. For me, these are delicious, often unsettling – and sensitive…

A Book Review by Cecilia A. Zoppelletto. Charting the recent film industry of an entire continent is an unimaginable task and, even…

By Elias Savada. Woody Allen has gone dumpster diving. His new film, Wonder Wheel, is anything but wondrous. In fact, it stinks. The…

By Tony Williams. Initially released in 2005, this new edition of Jean-Pierre Melville’s outstanding film has only one new feature to complement…

By Jeremy Owen. Documentaries about cinema are today so numerous that they are close to a genre in their own right and,…

By Jeremy Carr. The power and purpose of storytelling is essential to The Breadwinner, the newly released animated adaptation of Deborah Ellis’ 2000…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. On the surface, most of this edited collection of essays from Hong Kong University Press (2017) appears to…

A Book Review by Louis J. Wasser. The film director’s traditional conflict between making an artistic statement and making a film that…

By Dean Goldberg. There’s an often quoted line attributed to director Alfred Hitchcock that goes like this: “Drama is life with the…

By Christopher Sharrett. I have always been curious about the lives of nuns, mainly because I suffered under their twisted physical and…

By Elias Savada. The tongue-in-check, over-the-top aspect of Mayhem, a looney tune of a film from director Joe Lynch, offers a steroid-infused day…

By John Duncan Talbird. In January of 2015 screenwriter and aspiring filmmaker David Crowley was found dead along with his wife, Komel, and…

By Cecilia A. Zoppelletto. The sophisticated style of The Paris Opera, whilst weaving stories of mundane occupations with the artistic highlights of…

By Elias Savada. As the latest shadowy slant on the malevolent small town subterfuge melodrama – following a few weeks after George…

By Kate Hearst. Barbara Kopple’s latest documentary revisits a high profile domestic murder case in Mansfield, Ohio in 1989, and reveals how…

By Elias Savada. If you create a film and title it to suggest it’s the beginning of a series, you better hope that…

By Elias Savada. Auteur provocateur Ruben Östlund loves to pick at society’s scabs – and make you laugh and writhe at any unsettling…

By Ali Moosavi. Abbas Kiarostami’s passing in 2016 deprived the lovers of the 7th art of his unique blend of documentary and fiction,…

By Jeremy Carr. Once you accept and appreciate the superficial contrast between Agnès Varda (a legendary filmmaker, diminutive, inspirationally enthusiastic if rigid by…

By Elias Savada. I can’t remember the first time I saw Psycho. I was a 10-year-old kid when Alfred Hitchcock’s menacing tale…

A Book Review by Anthony Uzarowski. “Anybody got a match?” Who doesn’t remember the first time they heard Lauren Bacall utter these words;…

By Matthew Fullerton. Takashi Miike isn’t one to shy away from pushing the boundaries of existing genres and teasing his audiences while…

By Christopher Sharrett. Occasionally, the Hollywood industry produces a film that notes the poverty flowing from the neoliberal order, as a “permanent…

By Gary M. Kramer. The wordless pre-credit sequence of It Takes from Within sets the tone for this stark, atmospheric drama: three…

By Jake Rutkowski. About twenty minutes into The King’s Choice, it hits me: I know absolutely nothing about Norway’s political history. Nor its…

By Tony Williams. Based on Cornell Woolrich’s 1944 novel The Black Path of Fear, The Chase (1946) has long required a remastered…

Mark Felt: History as Mysticism »

By Christopher Sharrett. One of the characteristics of our militarized society, aside from the constant deluge of cop shows, superhero movies, and…

By Christopher Weedman. Walter Matthau (1920-2000) was among Hollywood’s most charismatic stars of the late 1960s and 1970s. During this fascinating period…

By Christopher Sharrett. I count Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001) among his supreme masterpieces, along with Code Unknown (2000), Cache (2005),…

By Johannes Schönherr. New York City, June 27th 1993: Notorious punk rocker GG Allin had finally served out a lengthy prison sentence in…

A Book Review Essay by John Duncan Talbird. David Simon’s television series The Wire ran on HBO from 2002-2008, five seasons of a…

By Devapriya Sanyal and Melissa Webb. The Indian film critics have done it again! As Glover and Kaplan state in their book Genders, the term “gender”…

A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. It is as if in movies, TV and books, genre progresses through a series of…

By Heather Hendershot. One week after Donald Trump’s inauguration, Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here reached the #9 position in book sales on Amazon. Brave…

A Book Review Essay by Matthew Sorrento. It may be tempting to recommend Scarface (1932) or Little Caesar (1930) as a first…

A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. Many decades ago I heard a comment made by a respected scholar, and affirmed by…

by John Andrew Gallagher. Tay Garnett and and writer Howard Higgin spent the months of February and March, 1930 on Catalina Island…

By Christopher Weedman. The Criterion Collection deserves to be commended for their continued efforts to bring greater attention to the underappreciated films…

By Christopher Sharrett. Readers will note that my title derives from essays and certain phrases by Matthew Arnold, T. S. Eliot, F.…

By Brandon Konecny. It has been suggested, sometimes by Moldovan film professionals themselves, that cinema does not currently exist in the Republic…

By Orville Lloyd Douglas. Black people are still mentally enslaved; even in the 21st century there is a psychic need by some…

By Tony Williams. As I write, hours tick away for the latest unimportant event in film history – the Hollywood Academy Awards…

By Christopher Weedman. The past couple of months have been full of rich rewards for admirers of the late Abel Gance. This…

By Anthony J. Steinbock. The Maltese Falcon is often considered to be the first film noir of the classical noir period (beginning…

By Johannes Schönherr. The Lovers and the Despot, a 2016 documentary by British directors Robert Cannan and Ross Adam, tackles an especially…

By Christopher Sharrett. I have always thought that John Sturges’s 1960 Western The Magnificent Seven has suffered too unfavorably in comparison to…

By Tony Williams. Although this special Criterion three film DVD set has been available since 2008, it is only recently that I…

By Tony Williams. Long awaited by many, following either unavailability or dubious accessibility via duped 16mm copies, unwatchable VHS copies, and bootlegged…

By Ramin S. Khanjani. Of all directors associated with the pre-1979 “Iranian New Wave,” Nosratallah Karimi probably presents one odd case for…

By Christopher Sharrett. I have been meaning for some time to put pen to paper about last year’s superb achievement by Laszlo…

By Michael Betancourt. Michael Morris’ expanded cinema performances, Second Hermeneutic (2013) lasting approximately nine minutes, and Third Hermeneutic (2014) lasting approximately eleven minutes,…

By Tony Williams. “She was so much more than the Green woman in Star Trek” (George Pappy DVD audio-commentary). “What I knew I…

By David Ryan. Before United 93 opened ten years ago, the film’s previews were greeted with varying degrees of stress and grief.…

By Anthony Uzarowski. The 1950s are often seen as the time of Hollywood’s greatest splendour, yet the reality of the time was…

By Sotiris Petridis. Introduction The Star Wars saga is an internal and important part of popular culture since its first filmic text…

By Richmond B. Adams. During a conversation approximately one-third of the way through The Dark Knight (2008), Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) expresses…

By Christopher Sharrett. I use the word “excavated” in my title not because the 1977 horror film The Sentinel , directed by…

By Film International. The editors’ Top 10 and Overrated 10 include films that were released in the editors’ respective regions during 2015.…

By Fred Wagner. The Show of Shows (2015), a recently released documentary made out of archive footage shows the lost world of…

By Edgar Tijhuis. Sometimes it seems like time stood still in Slovenia. In 2009 Variety magazine reported about a “royalty battle” in…

By Tony Williams. Critic-director Stig Bjorkman, well known for his studies on directors such as Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman, has made…

By David Ryan. Rewriting history is a common academic enterprise, and crafting Elizabethan history – particularly Shakespearean biography – is composed recursively. Though…

Kurt Vonnegut Hunter Thompson Norman Mailer Tom Wolfe William Burroughs Jonathan Miller William Burroughs Jr Jacob Bronowski Robert Hughes Bob Woodward Carl…