Film International | Thinking Film Since 1973

When Tay Garnett Met Frankie and Johnnie: Her Man (1930) »

by John Andrew Gallagher. Tay Garnett and and writer Howard Higgin spent the months of February and March, 1930 on Catalina Island writing Her Man, sharing a house…

The Roots of Social Change: Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs on Criterion »

By Christopher Weedman. The Criterion Collection deserves to be commended for their continued efforts to bring greater attention to the underappreciated films of director Ermanno Olmi. It is…

The Function of Film Criticism at Any Time »

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

All God’s Children (Toti copiii domnului, 2012)

A Forgotten Country’s Forgotten Cinema: Searching for Hope in Post-Soviet Moldovan Cinema »

By Brandon Konecny. It has been suggested, sometimes by Moldovan film professionals themselves, that cinema does not currently exist in the Republic of Moldova, Europe’s poorest and perhaps…

Kentucky Fried Chicken in the Moonlight »

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

The Aesthetic Majesty of King Hu: A Touch of Zen on Criterion »

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

The Resurrection of Abel Gance’s J’accuse (1938) on Olive Films »

By Christopher Weedman. The past couple of months have been full of rich rewards for admirers of the late Abel Gance. This brilliant and innovative French film director…

I Wake Up Screaming: Far from “Kansas” »

By Anthony J. Steinbock. The Maltese Falcon is often considered to be the first film noir of the classical noir period (beginning in 1941 and ending in 1958…

The Lovers and the Despot: Forced Seduction, North Korean Style »

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

Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven: Loss of Grace »

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

Entertaining Mr. Klein: Eclipse Series 9 – The Delirious Fictions of William Klein »

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

Festival Reports

The 2017 AFI DOCS Short Films »

By Gary M. Kramer. The short documentary films at this year’s AFI DOCS ranged from the political to the personal. The political shorts were part of the festival’s “World Views” program. One of…

By Gary M. Kramer. Ecuadorian cinema has been booming in recent years, and the 3rd Ecuadorian Film Festival in New York, June 9-17, showcases films by some of the most intriguing directors from…

By Ali Moosavi. In A Gentle Creature, by the Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa which played at the Cannes Official Competition, a woman in a Russian village receives a parcel, which she had sent to…

By N. Buket Cengiz. No matter how much face Turkey loses on the international stage particularly with its friction with European countries, Istanbul Film Festival is a phenomenon in Turkey that has always…

Tribeca Talks: Directors Series - Alejandro González Iñárritu. Photo by B Lacombe.

By Gary M. Kramer. This year, at the Tribeca Film Festival, one of the Tribeca Talks programs featured Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu being interviewed by Yugoslavia-born artist, Marina Abramović. “She is the…

Sexy Durga (Sanal Kumar Sasidharan, 2017)

By Martin Kudláč. International Film Festival Rotterdam that built its brand on investigating, gathering and curating the future of the world cinema through a long-term focus on emerging auteurs and discoveries possessing an innovative…

By Cleaver Patterson. Is it done intentionally? Are film festival programmers that creative? Well, assuming they are, those behind 2016’s FrightFest clearly put quite some thought into the films showing at the Vue…

By Gary M. Kramer. The 54th New York Film Festival showcases more than one hundred features, shorts, documentaries and experimental films September 30 – October 15. Many of the titles are the latest…

Interview

From Drawn Till Dusk: Milan Erceg on 24 Hour Comic »

By Constantine Frangos. When renowned cartoonist, author, and comics theorist Scott McCloud first suggested the idea of creating a…

By Matthew Fullerton. Night School, which premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, is the latest documentary from Emmy…

By Tom Ue. Actor, writer, and filmmaker James Fanizza graduated from York University before making his television debut in a commercial…

By Melissa Webb. In David Cronenberg’s Shivers (1975), a parasite gets loose in an apartment complex and begins infecting the…

By Irv Slifkin. Star Trek fans thought they knew Susan Oliver, as “Vina” the green alien woman in the abandoned…

By John Duncan Talbird. In 2002, director Steven Shainberg won a special jury prize at the Sundance film festival for…

By Gary M. Kramer. Newton is co-writer/director Amit Masurkar’s nifty film about title character (a charismatic Rajkummar Rao), an…

By Matthew Fullerton. Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe, Austria’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 89th Academy…

By Jeremy Carr. Doug Liman’s lifelong interest in filmmaking first paid off with the breakout indie hit Swingers in…

By Sergey Toymentsev. Alexander Nevsky is a Russian bodybuilder turned actor, writer, producer, and now director. Before coming to…

By Amir Ganjavie. It seems that there is no better subject than the life of Emily Dickinson to attract the…

Richmond Adams: Thank you both for these helpful comments: much to digest!
Richmond Adams: A most helpful overview, especially for those of us who came of age somewhat restricted by American...
Jan Huber: Although I have not seen this movie yet, I live this movie every day of my life. I am angry and...
Terra Douglas: What a great article this is. You have captured the essence of the movie and piqued the interest of...
Tony Williams: Correction – should be “bereaved father” but he is also symbolically a...

Review

Taking Stock – The Second Edition of the Criterion Collection’s Straw Dogs »

By Tony Williams. In 2003 Criterion issued a two-disk DVD version of Sam Peckinpah’s controversial Straw Dogs (1971) when the issue of the director’s supposed virulent misogyny and sexism still…

Eternal Fugitives: Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night from Criterion »

By Tony Williams. Again Criterion have provided us with a welcome reissue of a classic film noir now in a new 2k digital restoration with valuable feature material including the 2007…

Cinematic Archeology and the Portrayal of a “Wonder Woman”: Letters from Baghdad »

By Martin Kudláč. In the 1996 film The English Patient directed by Anthony Minghella is a scene with British soldiers examining a map. “But can we get through those mountains?”…

An Appreciation of Call Me By Your Name »

By Zhuo-Ning Su. Films are lives imagined, projected, simulated. When the play-pretend is effective and the make-believe works, we can hope to lose ourselves in a staged reality that convincingly…

Documenting Post-Millennial Teens: All This Panic »

By Kate Hearst. With an artful lens, All This Panic captures the awkward and fleeting stage of teenagers on the cusp of young adulthood. Over the course of three years,…

You Can’t Keep Quiet Anymore: Atomic Homefront »

By Elias Savada. If you’re not screaming mad by the end of Atomic Homefront, you obviously believe the system works. As a study in government failure and corporate greed, this HBO-supported…

No Future: Ghost World (Criterion Collection) »

By Christopher Sharrett. I should say at the outset that my thoughts about the social-political vision (or failure thereof) of Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World are dependent on the fine work…

Auteur as Raconteur: Director’s Cut by Ted Kotcheff, with Josh Young »

A Book Review by Irv Slifkin. Who would have figured the Canadian director of such diverse films as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974), North Dallas Forty (1979), and First Blood (1982) would be such…

Marlon Rides Again!: One Eyed Jacks from Criterion »

By Tony Williams. In his 2015 detailed and definitive study The Authentic Death and Contentious Afterlife of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Paul Seydor lamented the fact that then…

No Pity for Emily Dickinson: A Quiet Passion »

By John Duncan Talbird. Terrance Davies’ most recent film, A Quiet Passion, is a strange drama. It is a biopic and a period piece, an adaptation without a source text, an…

Phoenix Sans Gimmicks: You Were Never Really Here (Cannes 2017 Review) »

By Ali Moosavi. Lynn Ramsey’s violent film noir was the last film to be shown at the Cannes Official Competition. It is based on a short novella by Jonathan Ames. Joaquin…

The Lights Are On, But Is Anybody Home?: House & House II on Arrow/MVD »

By Jeremy Carr. The 1980s was a pivotal period for horror films. As low-budget “Video Nasty” provocations steadily faded from America’s grindhouse screens, the down and dirty days of the…

Home Is Where the Hermit Is: Wakefield »

By Elias Savada. There is a hidden recluse swirling around our theaters (and video on demand), and his name is Wakefield. Please go find him. While Howard Wakefield seems normal…

Not Your Grandfather’s Raging Bull: The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki »

By Elias Savada. Aki Kaurismäki may have to scooch over a bit to make room in the upper tier of Finnish cinema for thirty-something director Juho Kuosmanen. While Kaurismäki’s deadpan style…

24 Frames: A Sad Goodbye to Kiarostami (Cannes 2017 Review) »

By Ali Moosavi. The late Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s last film, 24 Frames, was shown as a special event of the 70th Cannes Film Festival, bringing an innovative, masterful career to an…

Moody and Improved: Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled (Cannes 2017 Review) »

By Ali Moosavi. Sofia Coppola’s decision to remake Don Siegel’s 1971 film The Beguiled (in Official Competition at this year’s Cannes), seems on the surface as strange and intriguing as Coen…

Bright and Bleak: Wind River (Cannes 2017 Review) »

By Ali Moosavi. Taylor Sheridan has written the script for a couple of terrific thrillers recently: Sicario and Hell or High Water. This year he is in Cannes in the…

Super Troopers, or Super Dupers? Superheroes on World Screens, Edited by Rayna Denison and Rachel Mizsei-Ward »

A Book Review by Tony Williams. Before you can say “Meryl Streep”, “Mamma Mia”, “Shazam”, in addition to the many superheroes and heroines and recent critical studies, Superheroes on World…

Haneke Does Happy: Happy End (Cannes 2017 Review) »

By Ali Moosavi. Michael Haneke’s new film Happy End played at the Official Competition section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Haneke is a Cannes veteran, having won the Palm…

A Caricature of Godard: Michel Hazanavicius’s Redoubtable (2017 Cannes Review) »

By Ali Moosavi. Michel Hazanavicius became a cinema celebrity six years ago at Cannes where The Artist became the sensation of the festival and went on to win several Oscars, including…

By Elias Savada. Grief changes you. It can drive you to do dark and drastic things outside your normal routine. Such aberrations are…

By Anthony Uzarowski. Whenever a film gets digitally restored and reissued after a considerable amount of time passes from its initial release, the…

By Christopher Sharrett. I somehow conflate in my mind’s eye images of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg/The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and Les…

By Elias Savada. Thirty-eight years ago this month, the world experienced a horror like no other. Ridley Scott’s Alien intensely attacked worldwide audiences.…

By Tony Williams. With one exception, this new release does live up to the second part of the above caption. Long revered…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. Despite appearing in an independent press publication, this study deserves neither to be forgotten nor regarded…

By Elias Savada. Yeah, a lot of folks have been waiting for this one. Three years ago, the creative and marketing folks behind…

By Alex Ramon. Two new films about iconic Polish artists screened at the Gdynia Film Festival, Poland’s primary showcase for its national cinema,…

By Elias Savada. This film is for me. I am a genealogist and death is a constant on my family tree. I…

By Elias Savada. Making sense out of urban chaos was more than a dream for Jane Jacobs. It was a battle cry. Jacobs,…

By Elias Savada. The film is brief (76 minutes), but the title isn’t – My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea. Not as…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. Although countless books have appeared in past and present featuring stars, many who never achieved enduring…

By John Duncan Talbird. It’s hard to know why Werner Herzog still makes fiction films. He clearly loves to travel to strange and…

By Elias Savada. Both old school and old-fashioned come together in style and substance in Tommy’s Honour, Jason Connery’s passable historical look at…

By Tony Williams. Ever since seeing that unforgettable still in Kevin Brownlow’s The War, the West, and the Wilderness (1979), the grim-visage…

By Devapriya Sanyal. At first glance it may seem that Glory, the new Bulgarian film directed by Petar Valchanov and Kristina Grozeva, belongs…

A Book Review by Irv Slifkin. In The Lives of Robert Ryan (Wesleyen University Press, 2015), Chicago film critic J.R. Jones points…

By Elias Savada. The actual typhoon in After the Storm is more than a physical catastrophe. It’s a powerful metaphor for an…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. Last week, a friend and fellow reviewer Chris Sharrett told me about his experiences at the…

By Jeremy Carr. Since the release of Noah Baumbach’s 2015 documentary on Brian De Palma, the legendary filmmaker, who has for decades…

By Devapriya Sanyal. Qissa (“fable”), Anup Singh’s second directorial venture (2013; released in India in 2015), deals with many issues at the same time, with…

By Elias Savada. Let’s refresh: the films of French writer-director François Ozon tend to be sly, unsettling, and daring observations of the human…

By Elias Savada. As I watched Personal Shopper, I wondered if this new, mostly English-language film from French filmmaker Olivier Assayas was a…

By Christopher Weedman. Janus Films’ stunning 4K restoration of the “Marseille Trilogy” by the esteemed Marcel Pagnol is one of the essential…

By Neila Driss. Michal Goldman’s documentary, Nasser’s Republic, The Making of Modern Egypt (2016), was screened on November 20th during the 38th…

By Elias Savada. The indie movie Donald Cried joins a growing number of feature films based on a short subject (among my…

By Elias Savada. Kong: Skull Island, Hollywood’s latest outing for its furry Eighth Wonder of the World, has arrived in an energetic, well-mounted,…

A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. The film critic Robin Wood (1931-2009) was one of those writers who helped the general public…

By Elias Savada. Ever wonder what it’s like to spend a long day in the life with a comic book artist? Or…

By Christopher Sharrett. I was curious about Jordan Peele’s film Get Out. I heard rumors that it was a riposte to Guess…

By Elias Savada. You don’t need to be creative when making a low budget horror film. They can suck, yet are usually profitable…

By Elias Savada. So, let’s get to the big question you’re asking your mirror. Is Matt Damon’s new fantasy action movie the…

By Elias Savada. Irish director Michael Lennox has been to the Oscars – for his 2014 film Boogaloo and Graham, a heartwarming comedy…

By John Duncan Talbird. On the police brutality episode of ABC’s sitcom Black-ish, the teenaged son, Junior (Marcus Scribner), reads out loud from…

By Kate Hearst. Over the course of forty-plus years, Barbara Kopple has made her documentaries with one focus: to be truthful to…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. During his lifetime, Samuel Fuller was fortunate enough to receive acclaim from monographs and articles dedicated…

By Kate Hearst. First screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015, and recently released in the United States, Belgian director Jaco Van…

By Tony Williams. Something Wild (1961) has nothing to do with the similarly titled well-known 1986 Jonathan Demme film. In fact before…

A Book Review by Matthew Fullerton. Lars-Martin Sorenson is probably best known to cinephiles for his interview on censorship during the American…

A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. Paul Douglas Grant’s new book Cinéma Militant: Political Filmmaking & May 1968 (Wallflower Press, 2016) is…

By Tony Williams. 50 years ago I watched the one and only BBC TV transmission of The Power of the Daleks (November…

By Will Tomford. As I watched Loving come to an end, I thought to myself, please don’t have an epilogue text. An…

By Tony Williams. Since companies have decided to issue features accompanying DVD reissues of films available on VHS and Laserdisc in the…

By Jeremy Carr. Who gets the credit for Cat People (1942)? Is it first-time producer Val Lewton, who though generally overlooked in…

A Book Review by Jessica Baxter. Let’s face it. White liberals are having a “woke” moment that is shamefully long overdue. Growing…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. In Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) the enigmatic voice of Dr. Soberin delivers one of…

By Christopher Sharrett. The title to Pablo Larrain’s film Jackie might be more sensibly called The Last Days of Kennedy; the title…

In Praise of Susan Oliver: The Green Girl (2014) »

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…

By John Garland Winn. Jeff Barnaby, a Mi’kmaq First Nations director, was four years old when the Quebec Provincial Police raided his…

By Rajko Radović. Blood has been shed on the asphalt at night. We see it in close-up as thin red lines spreading…

By Christopher Sharrett. When I first took note of the television series Madam Secretary (2014-), I assumed it was a sort of…

By Richard Grigg. Director Guy Ritchie’s 2015 film The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is of course inspired by the U.S. television series of…

By Ramin S. Khanjani. For many avid followers of Iranian cinema across the world, the experience of this national cinema justifiably doesn’t…

By William Repass. In the thematic arc formed by Fellini’s body of work, La dolce vita (1960) can be said to represent…

By Christopher Sharrett. Some months ago I saw The Way, Way Back (2013) and was taken by it enough to buy the…

By James Knight. This August will see the US theatrical release of She’s Funny That Way, the latest feature from Peter Bogdanovich.…

By Tom Silva. Film is a living thing and so it faces an unending series of deaths. Like the mythic hero in…

By Robert K. Lightning. Lovers that demonstrate both spiritual affinity and spiritual equality have long been popular in middle-class entertainment. Repartee has…

By Geoffrey Fox. The credits roll over a black-and-white newsreel of missiles and men parading before an austere Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow…

By Tony Williams. The title of this article has a double meaning. It is primarily a reworking of that lavishly illustrated and…

By Benjamin Bergholtz. “Each single manifestation of the culture industry inescapably reproduces human beings as what the whole has made them.” (Adorno…

By Christopher Sharrett. Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz’s Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem is a work of such staggering importance that its…

By Daniel Garrett. Some old films have a special appeal. They might not be excellent or particularly beloved objects, and yet they…

By Francesco Pascuzzi. Already with the film’s title, Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Unknown Woman (La Sconosciuta, 2005) sets out to toy with the…

By Tony Williams. On initial release, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Un Flic (1972) disappointed many and has remained in critical limbo to the present…

By Laura Crossley. “You’ve enjoyed the film, so now what are you going to do about the message? Tolkien didn’t just write…

By Elizabeth Mizon and Lee Salter. Digital media technologies are full of paradoxes. On one hand they are said to open up…

By Daniel Garrett. In the film Philadelphia (1993), written by Ron Nyswaner and directed by Jonathan Demme, the actor Tom Hanks is…

By Noah Charney. Branko Djuric, who goes by the nickname Djuro, is one the biggest film and television stars of the former…

By Trevor Mowchun. “Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as…

By Robert K. Lightning. “It follows that the critic should read without inappropriate bias. We cannot properly object to The Pilgrim’s Progress,…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. We live in the age of the visible invisible; everything is supposedly available to us online, but in…

By Sheana Ochoa. Anyone who has watched the scene in the trailer of The Theory of Everything when Stephen Hawking’s character pulls…

By Christopher Sharrett. Australian filmmaker Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook is last season’s fascinating, much-discussed contribution to the horror film, a genre that…

By Martin Smith. Despite increased transparency and liberalisation at the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) in recent decades, Britain remains one…

By Rajko Radovic. “I’m gonna wait till the stars come out. And see them twinkle in your eyes. I’m gonna wait till…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Now that some time has elapsed between the Sony hack and the release of the film that apparently…

By Film International. Another film year has come to an end and it’s time to sum up. Here are the films that…

When Tay Garnett Met Frankie and Johnnie: Her Man (1930) »

by John Andrew Gallagher. Tay Garnett and and writer Howard Higgin spent the months of February and March, 1930 on Catalina Island writing Her Man, sharing a house with Lewis…

The Roots of Social Change: Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs on Criterion »

By Christopher Weedman. The Criterion Collection deserves to be commended for their continued efforts to bring greater attention to the underappreciated films of director Ermanno Olmi. It is regrettable that,…

The Function of Film Criticism at Any Time »

By Christopher Sharrett. Readers will note that my title derives from essays and certain phrases by Matthew Arnold, T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, D. H. Lawrence, Robin Wood, and…

A Forgotten Country’s Forgotten Cinema: Searching for Hope in Post-Soviet Moldovan Cinema »

By Brandon Konecny. It has been suggested, sometimes by Moldovan film professionals themselves, that cinema does not currently exist in the Republic of Moldova, Europe’s poorest and perhaps least known…

Kentucky Fried Chicken in the Moonlight »

By Orville Lloyd Douglas. Black people are still mentally enslaved; even in the 21st century there is a psychic need by some Black artists to seek white approval and acceptance.…

The Aesthetic Majesty of King Hu: A Touch of Zen on Criterion »

By Tony Williams. As I write, hours tick away for the latest unimportant event in film history – the Hollywood Academy Awards which will have millions glued to their television…

The Resurrection of Abel Gance’s J’accuse (1938) on Olive Films »

By Christopher Weedman. The past couple of months have been full of rich rewards for admirers of the late Abel Gance. This brilliant and innovative French film director enriched the…

I Wake Up Screaming: Far from “Kansas” »

By Anthony J. Steinbock. The Maltese Falcon is often considered to be the first film noir of the classical noir period (beginning in 1941 and ending in 1958 with Orson…

The Lovers and the Despot: Forced Seduction, North Korean Style »

By Johannes Schönherr. The Lovers and the Despot, a 2016 documentary by British directors Robert Cannan and Ross Adam, tackles an especially bizarre episode in Korean history playing out in…

Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven: Loss of Grace »

By Christopher Sharrett. I have always thought that John Sturges’s 1960 Western The Magnificent Seven has suffered too unfavorably in comparison to its source material, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954).…

Entertaining Mr. Klein: Eclipse Series 9 – The Delirious Fictions of William Klein »

By Tony Williams. Although this special Criterion three film DVD set has been available since 2008, it is only recently that I have discovered the work of William Klein. I…

Rare Welles No Longer Unseen: Chimes at Midnight and The Immortal Story on Criterion »

By Tony Williams. Long awaited by many, following either unavailability or dubious accessibility via duped 16mm copies, unwatchable VHS copies, and bootlegged DVDS, two of Welles’s most accomplished achievements are…

Once There Were Bawdy Tales: Nosrat Karimi’s Matrimonial Comedies »

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

Son of Saul: Versions of the Irrational »

By Christopher Sharrett. I have been meaning for some time to put pen to paper about last year’s superb achievement by Laszlo Nemes, Son of Saul, but have hesitated for…

Michael Morris’ Hermeneutics: Visual Music, Expanded Cinema, New Aesthetic »

By Michael Betancourt. Michael Morris’ expanded cinema performances, Second Hermeneutic (2013) lasting approximately nine minutes, and Third Hermeneutic (2014) lasting approximately eleven minutes, are both produced using a combination of traditional…