Film International | Thinking Film Since 1973

christian-bales-out-of-the-furnace-bombsheres-your-box-office-roundup

Out of the Furnace: The Question of Adversarial Cinema »

By Christopher Sharrett. I did not see Scott Cooper’s Out of the Furnace during its initial run some months ago, in part because I thought little of Cooper’s…

Bruno Dumont and the Revival of the Human, Part 3 »

By Christopher Sharrett. To Part 2. Hadewijch Hadewijch is the first of two films (the second is Hors Satan) directly focused on the pursuit of the spiritual. I…

Bruno Dumont and the Revival of the Human, Part 2 »

By Christopher Sharrett. To Part 1. L’Humanité Bruno Dumont’s second film has been termed by certain commentators a “remake” of La Vie de Jésus. The notion is bewildering.…

Bruno Dumont and the Revival of the Human, Part 1 »

By Christopher Sharrett. Bruno Dumont is among our most important filmmakers, a fact that has gone mostly unnoticed outside Europe. His particular significance seems unrecognized in the US.…

Surviving the Monster Mom: Child’s Pose »

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “I hope it’s like a mirror.” (Călin Peter Netzer on Child’s Pose) “They fuck you up, your mum and dad / They may not…

The Narcissistic Sociopathology of Gender: Craig’s Wife and The Hitch-Hiker, Part 2 »

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. To Part 1. While Dorothy Arzner’s Craig’s Wife (1936) revolves around a pathological female who is undone by her desperate attempts to conform to…

Hollywood Nomad: Andrew Dominik’s Aussiewood »

By Stephen Gaunson. “I live here now and I don’t like going home.” (Andrew Dominik qtd. in Sperling 2012) “I wouldn’t mind shooting again in Australia but I…

Missing in Action: The Lost Version of Vanishing Point »

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Much has been deservedly written on Richard C. Sarafian’s existential road movie Vanishing Point (1971), a shambling, glorious wreck of a film that nevertheless…

The Narcissistic Sociopathology of Gender: Craig’s Wife and The Hitch-Hiker, Part 1 »

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. It’s instructive to study the work of Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino in context with one another. Though at first glance, one might easily…

Preliminary Notes on the Monochrome Universe »

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Lately I’ve been thinking about black and white movies, and how they’ve almost completely disappeared from the current cinematic landscape.[1] There are occasional projects…

“Illusion and Reality” Films: Genre and Apotheosis »

By Brian Russell Graham. A great many of the most popular films of recent decades are characterized by a character’s struggle to separate illusory worlds from ordinary reality.…

Festival Reports

SXSW 2014 Festival Report »

By Jacob Mertens. I keep trying to think of a breezy anecdote to encapsulate my experience at SXSW this year, but I’m realizing it would be something of a lie. The festival, as…

By Boukary Sawadogo. Sundance Film Festival is to independent cinema what Hollywood is to mainstream commercial cinema around the world. The best of independent filmmakers’ works compete for awards but also for visibility…

Free Range (Ballaad maailma heakskiitmisest)

By Yun-hua Chen. The 64th Berlinale opened with Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel, a fitting festival film that set a playful tone and brought glamour to town, thanks to which we saw the…

By Yun-Hua Chen. November in Berlin is a busy month for film buffs in the capital, as there are three major independent film festivals: Afrikamera, Interfilm, and Around the World in 14 Films.…

By Brandon Konecny and Jacob Mertens. Tucked away on the coast of North Carolina, there is a festival dedicated to the weirdly beautiful, the perversely provocative—a lovingly programmed lineup, taking shape as an…

Interview

Diva Directors Around the Globe: Spotlight on Isabel Coixet »

By Anna Weinstein. Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet has directed ten features and three documentaries in the past twenty-five years.…

By Anna Weinstein. Oscar-winning Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier has directed fifteen films since 1991. Her film Brothers (2004) inspired…

By Gary M. Kramer. Sharon Badal is the shorts film curator for the Tribeca Film Festival. This year,…

By Paul Risker. In 2011 Mark Cousins became film journalism’s Odysseus when he concluded his six-year journey…

By Paul Risker. Caradog James’ sophomore feature, the science-fiction drama The Machine (2013), shares its genre sibling’s habitual tendency…

By Michael T. Toole. Victor Salva has long had a popular career in the horror genre with titles such…

By Noah Charney. February saw the release of a new, highly-acclaimed documentary film called The Rise and Fall of…

By Paul Risker. More than a decade has passed since actor Tom Gilroy stepped behind the camera to direct…

Tom Masthoff: I really like how this review does not spoil the movie for those who have not yet seen it, but gives a...
Wheeler Winston Dixon: For those who are interested, here is a not-so-great copy of BABY FACE NELSON uploaded to...
Christopher Sharrett: I was surprised I couldn’t be more enthusiastic about this film, which I recalled as...
Wheeler Winston Dixon: I agree entirely. When is Criterion — or anyone – going to put out BABY FACE...
Brandon Konecny: Wheeler, thanks for your comments! I agree with you about Žižek–I wasn’t very impressed...

Review

Riot in Cell Block 11: Less Than Convincing »

By Christopher Sharrett. Don Siegel has long been known as one of the “Hollywood professionals,” a group of second-string directors whose work was consistently reliable. Siegel’s films are tough and…

The Fictional Christopher Nolan (2013) »

A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. Todd McGowan may well be the finest film theorist currently working in the States. His work is consistently original, and he writes with a…

“A Lioness on the Prowl”: Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin »

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Under The Skin (2013) is being sold on the basis of a simple premise, which is true on the face of it, but also offers just…

Rising On a Bad Wind: Hayao Miyazaki’s Sad Farewell »

By Daniel Lindvall. The year is 1918 and we are somewhere on the Japanese countryside. Jiro is a young boy obsessed with airplanes. One night he dreams about flying a…

The Lying Camera of De Palma’s Snake Eyes »

By Jeremy Carr. As with much of his work, especially in the last 15 years or so, one’s response to Brian De Palma’s Snake Eyes (1999) was to a large degree…

Oculus: Another Look In the Haunted Mirror »

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Oculus is a rather pretentious title for a rather straightforward movie, but despite the assembly line nature of its’ construction, the film still has something going…

The Raid 2 – A SXSW Review »

By Jacob Mertens. The Raid 2 opens with a wide shot of a man kneeling beside a freshly dug grave. Facing his inevitable death, the film captures him as a…

The Superficial Ugliness of The Great Beauty »

By Daniel Lindvall. “Do you know why I eat only roots? Because roots are important,” explains a 104-year-old nun to the greying author and playboy Jep Gambardella, main character of…

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier, or, Nothing You Believe is True »

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. I’m teaching a class right now in comic book movies, partly to trace the history of the genre from the 1940s on – when they began…

Demise and Redemption: Throne of Blood and The Hidden Fortress on Criterion »

By Matthew Sorrento. To regard the “First Murder” of the Judeo-Christian tradition as a parable on fratricide is to miss the greater point. The brother turning on his own does…

Alain Robbe-Grillet’s L’Immortelle Finally Released on DVD and Blu-ray »

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Many years ago, in 1969, when I was working as a writer for Life magazine under editor Thomas Thompson, one of the highlights of my working…

Crowded Out, Fenced In: Pirjo Honkasalo’s Concrete Night »

By Daniel Lindvall. François Truffaut’s classic first film, The 400 Blows, ends on a beach. Antoine Doinel (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, who must have been about 14 when the film…

Joe – A SXSW Review »

By Jacob Mertens. To call Joe anything but a return to form for director David Gordon Green would be a disservice. And that has nothing to do with how terrible…

A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. In the introduction of his Post New Wave Cinema in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,…

By Jacob Mertens. A man and a woman lie naked on a bed of black satin, their pale skin holding the…

By Danny King. In the press notes for Grand Piano, director Eugenio Mira states the following: “Having been raised by wolves like…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. It would be a mistake to dismiss director Noam Murro’s sword and sandal “historical” pageant 300: Rise of…

By Axel Andersson. Oscar Wilde’s tale about the selfish giant who built a high wall around his garden can be thought about…

By Jeremy Carr. When he wasn’t genre hopping from Film Noir to Westerns to epic spectacles and war films, the perpetually underrated…

By Jacob Mertens. Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) drifts in zero gravity, curled into a fetal pose with eyes closed, as if…

By Christopher Neilan. In 1958, twenty-seven year old cahiers du cinema critic Claude Chabrol spent his wife’s inheritance money shooting his debut…

By Jeremy Carr. “A mother and a daughter. What a terrible combination of feelings and confusion and destruction.” So says Eva (Liv…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. I wish I could say kinder things about this film, especially since it’s clear that this was a…

By William Repass. Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street begins with a simple equation: money is a drug. “Enough of this shit…

A Book Review by Wheeler Winston Dixon. Let’s just start by saying that this is an excellent book. I get stacks of…

By Jacob Mertens. David O. Russell’s American Hustle begins with a title card stating “Some of this actually happened,” and for once…

By Giuseppe Sedia. Beyond any artistic value or aesthetic significance, the critical response to Gate of Hell (1953) provides a rare glimpse into…

A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. A full historical account of Bulgaria’s cinema under Communism—given the topic’s obscurity and the lack of…

By Cleaver Patterson. When someone is the subject matter of a film memoir, they must have a magical quality if they are…

By Jeremy Carr. The blacklist that shrouded the Hollywood community in suspicion, paranoia, and tragedy during the 1940s and ’50s, a steadily…

By Bill Fech. David Lowery’s quiet western drama Ain’t Them Bodies Saints came and went from theaters like a passing tumbleweed. The…

By Jacob Mertens. “The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right,…

By Andrew J. Douglas. Anticipating an early effort by a respected filmmaker—let alone one known for work that is at once thoughtful,…

By Matthew Sorrento. The choice of writer-director JC Chandor to cast Robert Redford in All is Lost was astute, if not fortunate.…

By Axel Andersson. At first it looks like an ornate latticework, but there is no way to separate the scars from the…

By Danny King. For his first two stabs at directing, Ralph Fiennes has selected subject matter that seems typical of an actor-turned-director…

A book review by Liza Palmer. In 2004, I had the pleasure of reviewing the first edition of Tony Lee Moral’s Hitchcock…

By Cleaver Patterson. A book like J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was always going to be too big in size and…

By Robert Kenneth Dator. Every single bit of visual stimulus that comes to the human brain via the visual cortex must be…

A Book Review by Jack Curtis Dubowsky. Henry Mancini—the iconic composer of ‘Moon River,’ ‘Peter Gunn,’ ‘Baby Elephant Walk,’ ‘The Pink Panther,’…

By Adam O’Brien. Like Roberto Rossellini, Ernst Lubitsch is a filmmaker whose greatness is both clear and very difficult to articulate. Penetrating…

A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. The increasing visibility of Eastern European films—those of the Romanian New Wave, especially—in the United States…

By Matthew Sorrento. Prominent for years on American television, John Frankenheimer’s Seconds had disappeared by the advent of DVD and remained unavailable…

By Jacob Mertens. In film, there is often a feeling of moral certainty. A protagonist has a line drawn for him by…

By Mark James. Call it Le Cruising. French filmmaker Alain Guiraudie stages a stripped-down rendition of William Friedkin’s 1980 gay serial killer…

By Oana Chivoiu. Pedro Costa’s landmark is an aesthetic of austerity that resonates with the thematic content in his features dealing with…

By Jacob Mertens. Left buried in the formidable winter of Northern Quebec, Bruce (Thomas Haden Church) dwells in the cramped cabin of…

The Mother’s Role in Bergman’s Persona »

By Terence Diggory. CONTENTS The Critical Audience Dramatis Personae Child’s Play Alma Mater Sons and Lovers Fear of Lying Fear of Dying…

By Lesley Brill. In Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses (most of the plot of which Frears’s Dangerous Liaisons follows faithfully),…

By Victoria Tickle. One-location (or one-room) films are films that do exactly what they say on their metaphorical tins: their narratives take…

By Christopher Sharrett. Joachim Lafosse’s Our Children (Á perdre la raison, a.k.a. Loving without Reason, a much more sensible title) put me…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “With poor and derisory resources, with the help and goodwill of those who have worked with me, I…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Max Ophüls, born Maximillian Oppenheimer on 6 May 1902, Saarbrücken, Germany, was a director known primarily for his…

By Victoria Tickle. Rape-revenge films are a controversial sub-genre of films that have been the subject of many critical debates surrounding feminism,…

By Will Dodson. Warner Home Video released a new Blu-ray set of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist on October 8, coinciding with the…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Noël Coward once observed that “television is for appearing on – not for looking at,” but as the…

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. As an internationally acclaimed Japanese/American artist, Yayoi Kusama rejects any Orientalist assumptions about her work or her self.…

By Jamie Isbell. Charles Burnett’s UCLA thesis feature Killer of Sheep (1977) has become something of a retrospective masterpiece. A cult artifact…

By Rossella Scalia. My first encounter with the director Elvira Notari occurred randomly, as almost always happens with important meetings. I…

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. I begin, as my title suggests, with a quote from Agnès Godard, the cinematographer of Beau Travail (1999):…

By Will Dodson. Wes Craven’s Scream 4 is in many ways a fitting capstone to the 9/11 decade, thus the title of…

By Ian Olney. Over the past decade or so, the Spanish horror film has undergone a striking renaissance. During the final years…

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. Alice Guy is a filmmaker whose body of work is still a site of contestation for modern critics;…

By Shashank Saurav. “Sometimes they think the way we work is very stylish and romantic, but actually it’s the way we can…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “There was a character that hung out in a clock called Froggy, the Magic Gremlin, and they used…

By Christopher Sharrett. It amazes me that so few reviewers noted emphatically that Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills (2012), like his earlier…

By Kelly Burt. The film Where the Wild Things Are (2009), based on the 1963 children’s book of the same name by…

By Devapriya Sanyal. The two great wars of the twentieth century would change everything for humankind once and for all; both materially…

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. Betty White has always been ahead of her time. This has been both a blessing and a curse.…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “Anyone can make a $100 million dollar movie, but to shoot a feature film in 12-14 days, with…

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact…