Film International | Thinking Film Since 1973

The Best Years of Our Lives: a Revaluation »

By Christopher Sharrett. While writing an essay on the post-Vietnam film Rolling Thunder, I thought of William Wyler’s much-applauded 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives, about…

Best - Ricardo Darin the Forest in The Aura

The Disquieting Aura of Fabián Bielinsky »

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “I said no to Hollywood. There you have no freedom to create.” (Bielinsky to Federico Fahsbender) “Film audiences won’t find in [The…

Family Friendly Torture Porn »

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “Watch new blood on the eighteen inch screen The corpse is a new personality Watch new blood on the eighteen inch screen The corpse…

Re-Birth of a Nation or Why Django Has More to Say about Contemporary America than the Other “Historically Accurate” Films »

By Celluloid Liberation Front “The former enemies of North and South are united again in common defence of their Aryan birthright.” (D.W. Griffith in The Birth of a…

The Shining 2.0 or: How New Media Changed Film Analysis »

By Hampus Hagman. In Iron Man 2 (2010), Tony Stark discovers that his deceased father has left behind coded sketches for a revolutionary new element that could not…

Zero Dark Thirty: Embarrassed No More »

By Christopher Sharrett. I write this comment on Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty more out of a sense of moral obligation and outrage rather than as an evaluation…

The Future Catches Up With The Past: Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets »

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “Targets are people…and you could be one of them!” (Tagline for Targets) Peter Bogdanovich got his start as a critic and historian, conducting interviews…

Rolling Thunder and the Poverty of the Vietnam Cinema »

By Christopher Sharrett. I recently happened upon a very good Studio Canal DVD of the John Flynn/Paul Schrader film Rolling Thunder (1977). The film, of some distinction at…

The Philosophy of the Double Bill (Or, How To Stop Worrying and Love Technology) »

By Sarah Myles. The perfect double bill is an elusive, mythical thing. A single entertainment event comprised of two unique artistic expressions. A tradition steeped in social history…

Fifties Hysteria Returns: Doomsday Prepping in a Culture of Fear, Death, and Automatic Weapons »

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “Consider Your Man Card Reissued” (Print ad for Bushmaster Firearms) I write this as I watch in sadness, surrounded by a bank of televisions…

Surrealism and Sudden Death in the Films of Lucio Fulci »

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Dedicated to the memory of Rick Lopez. The films of Lucio Fulci, the Italian horror filmmaker, are usually lumped in with those of other…

Festival Reports

Tribeca 2013 Festival Report »

By Gary M. Kramer. The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival offered attendees hundreds of films—documentaries, dramas, thrillers, comedies, and character studies—that sought to reveal some aspect of the human condition. Here is a rundown…

By Jacob Mertens. I have become convinced that I bring bad weather with me to Austin. For the last three years I have attended the SXSW Film Festival, and for the last three…

By N. Buket Cengiz. At the 32nd International Istanbul Film Festival organized by İstanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV), which ran from March 30th to April the 14th, outstanding examples of the…

Christine Chansou and Vincent Trintignant-Corneau

By Moira Sullivan. The 35th Créteil International Women’s Film Festival, which was held from March 22 to 31, featured several special events this year. First, tributes were given to veteran filmmakers and actresses…

Interview

Nine Questions about the ‘Hitchcock 9’: an interview with Rob Byrne of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival »

By Michael T. Toole. The ‘Hitchcock 9’ – the master of suspense’s nine earliest surviving works, newly restored by…

By Gary M. Kramer. Former actor turned filmmaker Scott Coffey’s Adult World, which received its World Premiere at the…

By David A. Ellis. David Worley was brought up in Rickmansworth, London and finished his schooling at Watford Grammar…

By Gary M. Kramer. A stunning coming-of-age drama about rural childhood and the fragile line between life and death,…

By Gary M. Kramer. One of the best documentaries at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival was director Sean Dunne’s…

By Gary M. Kramer. The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival presented the world premiere of Big Bad Wolves, a thriller from…

By Daniel Lindvall. Documentary filmmaker Shola Lynch’s new film, Free Angela & All Political Prisoners, tells the story of…

David A Ellis: It is ironic that just when film is improving and presentation technology has improved, digital...
David A Ellis: DIGITAL allows films to be screened without scratches,dirt and weave.The quality remains no matter how...
Rob Lewis: Great piece Buket! You write so well, and you helped bring back so many festival memories. Thank you.
Gwendolyn Foster: I just want to say a thank you and send a shout out to Shola– your work is important and very...
Amy R Handler: What an absolutely fascinating interview!

Review

66th Cannes Film Festival Day 3 – The Cannes Evolution, Strangers on the Lake and Like Father Like Son »

By Moira Sullivan. The Evolution of Cannes The Cannes Film Festival continues to be one of the most exciting manifestations of cinema in the world. Fortunately, the event is not…

66th Cannes Film Festival Day 2 – The Bling Ring and Touch of Sin »

By Moira Sullivan. The reviews for The Great Gatsby were not overwhelmingly positive and most critics, including myself, recognized the film as ambitious but flawed. As an out of competition…

Steven Spielberg - Jury President for 66th Cannes Film Festival

66th Cannes Film Festival Day 1 – The Great Gatsby and Opening Ceremonies »

By Moira Sullivan. Nearly 4,000 accredited journalists descend upon the city of Cannes for a week and a half of cinema magic and what looks like heavy rain for the…

Slice and Dice: The Slasher Film Forever »

By Cleaver Patterson. During cinema’s long and varied history, the horror film has always been considered the poor relation. Forget that movies designed to disturb are almost as old as…

The Place Beyond The Pines (2012) »

By Jacob Mertens. A stretch of cute neighborhoods with picket fences, green lawns. A traveling carnival filled with trailers and sideshow burnouts. A shack buried out in the forest, surrounded…

Star Trek Into Darkness »

By Cleaver Patterson. Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) dispels the widely held assumption that sci-fi extravaganzas are, on the whole, aimed purely at the teenage / geek market. Here, it…

Iron Man 3 (2013) »

By Jacob Mertens. Many hinge the success and failure of a superhero film on whether villains can entice and excite the audience, or whether heroes can effectively transcend their humanity…

Whatever Makes You Happy (2010) »

By Robert Kenneth Dator. This little film makes me happy. It’s not little in subject. It’s not little in heart. As a matter of fact, everything about Whatever Makes You…

Things I Don’t Understand (2012) »

By Robert Kenneth Dator. The Tension Between Being and Nothingness Jean Paul Sartre wouldn’t mind my purloining Being and Nothingness, as Things I Don’t Understand is very much an existentialist…

The Holistic (2012) »

By Robert Kenneth Dator. “I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of an afterlife.” The Holistic is a film short that stays long in one’s memory. I cannot count how…

The Lords of Salem »

By Cleaver Patterson. Having watched The Lords of Salem (2012) one really has to ask what the point behind such a film is? That’s not to say that every movie…

By Cleaver Patterson. They say if something’s not broken, don’t fix it – advice Sam Rami and Bruce Campbell might have been…

By Jacob Mertens. As far as rallying cries go, I suppose you can do worse than “spring break forever.” Even so, as…

By Cleaver Patterson. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under…

By Matthew Sorrento. By 1959, when making cinema history via Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock was weary of male victims on the run. In…

By Matthew Sorrento. I can understand the resistance to film the story of Jackie Robinson since the man himself played the role…

By Gaël Schmidt-Cléach. In the opening scene of Pedro Almodóvar’s I’m So Excited, two ground crew members, played by Antonio Banderas and…

By Martin Kudláč. The descendants of Plato and Aristotle have done it again. Despite the mass of negative press focussed on the…

By Robert Kenneth Dator. ‘#1 Film Documentation!’ Anyone in the business has been here before. “Here” is The Twilight Zone of the…

By Jacob Mertens. Could you survive a Christmas holiday season without any products made in China? As far as opening conceits go,…

By Jacob Mertens. A shirtless child in a cape streaks across the lawn chased by several twenty-something supervisors. They catch hold of…

By Robert Kenneth Dator. “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” Among the last quips of genius from the lips of Oscar Wilde,…

By Jacob Mertens. Five friends camp out in a cabin, helping one of their own detox from drugs, only to find foul…

By Daniel Lindvall. Wadjda (2012) is said to be the first feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia. It is also written…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Part Kim Jong-un’s “the West must fall” fantasy come to life, part right wing wet dream and all…

By Gaël Schmidt-Cléach. For his first film since 2007’s Redacted, Brian De Palma returns to his Hitchcockian obsession, this time by way…

By Cleaver Patterson. In film fantasy farmhouses have always been a popular mode of transportation between our world and that of make-believe.…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Scientists and mathematicians will never understand artists, and vice versa. This was brought home to me forcefully by…

By Morvary Samaré. The Invisible Men, an Israeli film by director Yariv Mozer, was one of the documentaries that screened at this…

By Jacob Mertens. In the summer of 2008, the Great Sichuan Earthquake rattled China’s cage and left a death toll of nearly…

By Cleaver Patterson. Several films have attempted to revisit Frank L. Baum’s magical land of Oz, since Judy Garland first walked the…

By Cleaver Patterson. Some people seem predestined to play certain roles. Seldom, however, do you find a complete cast so perfectly suited…

By Jacob Mertens. Can images invoking a sense of awe bring a man closer to God? If so, then Ang Lee’s Life…

By Cleaver Patterson. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have, during the long and varied history of their annual award…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Yasujiro Ozu is no longer a name unknown in the Western world; for a long time, this “most…

By Cleaver Patterson. Given the subject matter of The ABCs of Death (2012), the new compilation horror movie from producers Ant Timpson…

By Robert Kenneth Dator. “Featuring Enfant Terrible Street Superstars” This is not so much a title as a claim from director-producer Fabrizio…

By Cleaver Patterson. There is a certain type of film so caught up in a sense of its own importance, that it…

9 Day Hobbit: An Exploration of Cinematic Time »

By Diarmuid Corkery. Well before Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Hobbit was released, it had already caused controversy among tentative fans…

By Jonathan Rozenkrantz. Media history often seems to be understood as a (d)evolutionary succession of discrete units – one medium devouring the…

By Marcin Radomski. In the history of cinema we can find several unforgettable periods and schools which rise to the surface, are…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “All I want to do is make a million dollars.” (Jack Webb, 1953 [as qtd. in Hayde 2001:…

By Christopher Sharrett. This is an attempt at a brief revaluation of Roger Corman’s cycle of adaptations of the work of Edgar…

By Francis DiClemente. Last summer, in the midst of the blockbuster movie season dominated by sequels, 3-D animation and superhero offerings, I…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “This is the end My only friend, the end Of our elaborate plans, the end Of everything that…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. This is the fourth and final part of “Dark Humor in Films of the 1960s.” Follow these links…

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “Recently my dull life seems to have no meaning I am stuck with someone We’re not communicating I…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. This is the third article in a 4-part series. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. This is the second article in a 4-part series. You can read Part 1 here. With sick comedy…

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “If civilization goes down, that Would be an event to contemplate.” (Robinson Jeffers, “May-June, 1940”) Human-centered popular folktales…

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “There’s a story about an adolescent boy who was taken to a psychiatrist. The doctor drew a rectangle…

By Anna Weinstein. Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga is best known for writing ensemble films about the effects of tragedy on human life—how tragedy…

By Jonathan Rozenkrantz. When Walter Benjamin proclaimed the aura lost, he was hardly writing in grief. Being a Marxist, he saw in…

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “It’s not a likable movie. Even me, myself, I hate the film.” (Pascal Laugier) Pascal Laugier’s radically experimental…

By Christopher Sharrett. Any attempt at a reevaluation of Stanley Kramer must confront some critical resistances about this director. The common wisdom…

By Luke Buckle. ABSTRACT Iranian film has in recent decades comprised an increasingly important and influential cinema. The Iranian Islamic Revolution of…

By Jonathan Rozenkrantz. As I watch Fanny and Alexander (1982) for the first time since childhood, I am caught not so much…

By Peter Lavetti. Michel Hazanavicius is a brilliant filmmaker, an equal to Murnau and Hitchcock in his ability to compose images that…

By John Bredin. Track of the Cat, a 1954 early Cinemascope offering—produced, curiously enough, by John Wayne—had an unhappy childhood to say…

By Christopher Sharrett. My recent viewing of Meredith Willson/Morton da Costa’s film The Music Man, for the first time in decades, forced…

By Martin Mulcahey. Hollywood has not always been accepting of Latinas. Current stars Salma Hayek, Eva Mendes, and Penélope Cruz follow in…

By Carmel Doohan. “Social realism, what the fuck is social realism?” Paddy Considine, Director of Tyrannosaur (Little White Lies- Oct 2011) The…

By Omar Robert Hamilton. No form of art is as tied to reality as cinema. Though Hollywood would have us think…

By Celluloid Liberation Front. ‘We don’t want to disrupt taxpayers from the benefit of cultural democracy, do we?’ (Museum Guard in Savage…

By Ken Chen. Susan Sontag once called transparency – the luminousness of the thing in itself – the highest value in contemporary…

By Gary Bettinson. In 1967, movie actor Warren Beatty assumed the mantle of producer with Bonnie and Clyde. His decision to harness…

By Christopher Sharrett. It seems to me that Danish director Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011) is an important film (it is too…

By Celluloid Liberation Front. “If the young are not initiated into the village, they will burn it down just to feel its…

By Alexander Kirschenbaum. ‘Am I different somehow? Is it live or is it Memorex?’ (Seth Brundle [Jeff Goldblum] in David Cronenberg’s The…

The Best Years of Our Lives: a Revaluation »

By Christopher Sharrett. While writing an essay on the post-Vietnam film Rolling Thunder, I thought of William Wyler’s much-applauded 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives, about three veterans…

The Disquieting Aura of Fabián Bielinsky »

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “I said no to Hollywood. There you have no freedom to create.” (Bielinsky to Federico Fahsbender) “Film audiences won’t find in [The Aura] an…

Family Friendly Torture Porn »

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “Watch new blood on the eighteen inch screen The corpse is a new personality Watch new blood on the eighteen inch screen The corpse is a…

Re-Birth of a Nation or Why Django Has More to Say about Contemporary America than the Other “Historically Accurate” Films »

By Celluloid Liberation Front “The former enemies of North and South are united again in common defence of their Aryan birthright.” (D.W. Griffith in The Birth of a Nation) “A…