Film International | Thinking Film Since 1973

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 didn’t want was to just get…

Director Paul Greengrass prepares for a take.

United 93: A Social Conscience and the Ease of Historicism (A 10th Anniversary Retrospective) »

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

All the Fire: The use of sexual imagery as a way for attracting cinema audiences in 1950s America »

By Anthony Uzarowski. The 1950s are often seen as the time of Hollywood’s greatest splendour, yet the reality of the time was plummeting cinema attendance, which by 1953…

Star Wars Episode VII: Feminism from “Far, Far Away” »

By Sotiris Petridis. Introduction The Star Wars saga is an internal and important part of popular culture since its first filmic text back in 1977. Apart from the…

Cannibalized Chaos: Iago, The Joker and the “Good Sport” of Postmodernism »

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

The Sentinel Excavated »

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

Festival Reports

The 2016 New York Film Festival Shorts Program »

By Gary M. Kramer. The New York Film Festival offers a range of fascinating short films, in five programs that showcase narrative shorts, international auteurs, genre stories, New York stories, and documentaries. The Narrative…

By Simonetta Menossi. The International Sergio Amidei Award for Best Film Script is a yearly event that takes place in Gorizia, Italy. The Award is entitled in the memory of Sergio Amidei (1904-1981),…

By Robert Buckeye. Film festivals not only screen films we should see but also give us a reading of the field. At Art Film Fest this year, its first in Kosice after 23…

By Michael T. O’Toole. For those who enjoy a good silent film, you’ll seldom find a more a captivating outlet than the stylish San Francisco Silent Film Festival (held this year between June…

By Michael Miller. The 15th Tribeca Film Festival unspooled April 13 – 24, 2016 in New York presenting nearly 200 features and shorts from around the globe. Here are six noteworthy titles that…

By Gary M. Kramer. This year at the AFI Docs festival, June 22-26, there are several features and shorts depicting unique individuals working in odd jobs and hobbies. From sewage diving to train…

By Rob Lewis. Tickets? Check. Popcorn? Check. Bottle of water? Check. Notebook? Check. Festival Guide? Check. It’s 107 minutes long. That means if I leave before the credits and take a taxi, I can…

Interview

Random Beauty and Fragility: An Interview with Selma Vilhunen on Little Wing »

By Tom Ue. Selma Vilhunen earned an Academy Award nomination for her 2012 short film “Do I Have to…

By Anna Weinstein. Patricia Riggen has directed five features in the past decade. Her first feature, Under the Same…

By Tom Ue. Ashley McKenzie is an emerging writer-director from Cape Breton Island, Canada. Her 2015 short “4 Quarters”…

By Paul Risker. British filmmaker Sean Ellis’ Anthropoid (2016) tells the story of Operation Anthropoid, a daring chapter of…

By Tom Ue. Subject to Change is a new series that focuses on a group of LGBTI teenagers. Its first…

By Paul Risker. Indian musician, composer and producer A. R. Rahman has said: “Comedy is a universal language. I grew…

By Tom Ue. Seek is the directorial debut of Eric Henry. The film, made and set in Toronto, follows the…

By Tom Ue. Lina Rodriguez is a Colombian/Canadian filmmaker. She has written, directed and produced several short films, which have…

By Gary M. Kramer. In The Tenth Man, Argentine filmmaker Daniel Burman returns to his favorite theme of absent…

Tony Williams: This is a great interpretation Robert and I’ve always been skeptical of that evasive...
Tony Williams: This is such an informative review fully alert to visual style, historical context, and how the...
Robert K. Lightning: Fine reading to the film and its politics. In light of the author’s current BREAKING BAD...
Robert K. Lightning: I applaud Dr. Sharrett for noting that the brutality of Lulu’s murder goes “unrecognized” in the...
Matthew Sorrento: I share Tony’s sentiments, Chris. It’s a wonderful book that I’m currently...

Review

Japan’s Modernist Enigma: Woman in the Dunes on Criterion »

By Christopher Weedman. The haunting enigmatism and visual beauty of Woman in the Dunes (1964) has not diminished since its premiere over fifty years ago. Shot on a budget of…

The Social Misfits of Kikujiro »

By Yun-hua Chen. Made by Takeshi Kitano in 1999 and having entered the Cannes Film Festival in the same year, Kikujiro was subsequently remade into a Tamil-Indian film Nandala (2010)…

What Shall Remain Unseen?: Hidden Hitchcock by D. A. Miller »

A Book Review by Tony Williams. A DVD player now lets everyone scrutinize Hitchcock’s esoteric images, but the desire to engage the game of hide-and-seek latent in them – a…

Let the Muckraking Begin: When Two Worlds Collide »

By Elias Savada. Investigative documentaries have been a cranky, yet effusive growth industry (thank you, Michael Moore) over the last couple of decades, more so with the improvements in technology…

The Law of Capital: The Measure of a Man »

By Sérgio Dias Branco. Thierry Taugourdeau, factory worker, was fired along with more than 750 of his colleagues. He is 51 years old and has been unemployed for almost two. In…

Hell or High Water: The Wasteland After »

By Christopher Sharrett. Anyone of any consciousness who has toured the Southwest knows that it consists of pockets of great wealth surrounded by desert. Structurally, this is not unlike the…

From the Lost Adaptation of Frankenstein, Life Without a Soul (1915)

Hope in the Search of Lost Films by Phil Hall »

A Book Review by Irv Slifkin. Phil Hall did a great service to film fans seeking the forgotten and obscure with his regular column “The Bootleg Files” that ran for…

The Voice of a Frenetic, Heated Cinema – E̒ric Rohmer: A Biography by Antoine de Baecque and Noël Herpe »

A Book Review by James Knight. E̒ric Rohmer’s irrefutable place in the cathedral of film auteurs has been long since reserved. With films such as My Night with Maud in 1969,…

The French Spirited Away to New York: Phantom Boy »

By Jessica Baxter. Co-directors Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol follow up their Oscar nominated film, A Cat in Paris, with Phantom Boy, a film that is perplexingly set in New York…

A Film of its Time: Spies, Fritz Lang’s Enduring Espionage Thriller »

By Jeremy Carr. Fritz Lang’s Spies gets underway with a burst of kinetic energy, its first 15 minutes or so a case study in the advancement, endurance, and perhaps surprising…

Lo and Behold – Can You Hear Me Now? »

By Elias Savada. Werner Herzog’s documentaries tend to explore interesting lands or unusual people: the Chauvet caves in France (2010’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams), the frozen beauty of Antarctica (2007’s Encounters at the…

Time in “the Shack”: A Fuller Life »

By Tony Williams. “The hatemongers and reactionaries are the most loathsome thorns in the eye of a great Democracy. Every generation has its own and they must be fought and…

La Chienne: Renoir Begins »

By Christopher Sharrett. My title is a bit misleading, since Jean Renoir made a number of films in the silent era (none especially important to his reputation), and La Chienne…

Under the Sun: Unmasking North Korean Propaganda »

By Johannes Schönherr. Under the Sun, a documentary by Soviet-born and -raised director Vitaly Mansky, starts off like an slice of life type of cinéma vérité, filmed in the winter…

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings kick off their delayed 2014 tour at the Beacon Theater in New York

Inspiring and Unsettling: Miss Sharon Jones! »

By Jude Warne. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings are a seasoned, air-tight, top-notch funk-soul band. Via Jones’ musical talents and Bosco Man/Gabriel Roth’s analog recording and band leading genius, the group…

From Bankruptcy to 9/11: Downtown Film & TV Culture 1975-2001 by Joan Hawkins »

A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. Joan Hawkins’ recent multi-authored book, Downtown Film & TV Culture 1975-2001 (Intellect), is a heteroglossic text bringing together multiple genres – historical documents, interviews,…

Mirroring a Genius – Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You »

By Elias Savada. OK, kids, who among you doesn’t know who Norman Lear is? The few of you who raised your hands, shame on you. (I tested this question on…

Unearthing That Cold Day in the Park »

By Chris Neilan. Here’s something to brighten the day of any self-respecting cinephile: the unearthing of a forgotten film by a bona fide American master. And not just any master, but…

Beyond the Dream Life: Fantastic Planet on Criterion »

By Jessica Baxter. I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I first stumbled upon René Laloux’s surreal animated French language sci-fi film, Fantastic Planet (1973). I assume I…

A Woody Allen Fluff: Café Society »

By Elias Savada. Problems are afoot in Woodyland. The jokes are there, albeit fleetingly and the best ones deal with gallows humor. The romantic comedy-drama script seems regurgitated from some…

By Chris Neilan. Directors who blend genre elements with an arthouse sensibility are rarely short of fans or plaudits. Take new darling…

By Elias Savada. With big nods toward Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs), Wes Craven (The Hills Have Eyes), and Sam Peckinpah (The Wild…

By Cleaver Patterson. One has to question why some filmmakers see fit to remake films which were considered classics the first time…

By Christopher Sharrett. It occurs to me that the best (the only?) films seriously challenging the current international War on Women come…

By Paul Risker. “Bare bones thrown to a hungry dog…do nothing to appease its hunger.” – Thich Nhat Hanh, Thundering Silence: Commentaries…

By Elias Savada. Yes, there has been a lot of discussion – some quite vocal and inanely misogynistic – about the new Ghostbusters,…

By Elias Savada. Summer, 2014. Versailles. Boyhood. Road trip. That’s a possible tagline description of Microbe & Gasoline (Microbe et Gasoil), Michel Gondry’s…

By John Duncan Talbird. Frank Zappa was a man of his time even while remaining an iconoclast and pushing back against whatever counted…

By Elias Savada. Recruited out of high school, Hopper Gibson (Johnny Simmons) is professional baseball’s latest pitching sensation, but, like the cracked…

By Elias Savada. In an attempt to meld the pc gaming world with that of modest-budget movie-making, Beta Test doesn’t score many points.…

By Elias Savada. I wasn’t attracted to the ruffled, ordinary couple at the core of the latest big screen John le Carré adaptation,…

By Paul Risker. Humanity shares a love-hate relationship with the planet. Our ongoing rape and exploitation of it has been reciprocated, in a…

By John Duncan Talbird. Julius Cavero is a Bronx, NY graffiti artist who has been making art – both illegal and legal –…

By Elias Savada. Don’t be confused by the branding up front on this new live action/motion capture film from Steven Spielberg. “Disney’s…

By Jeremy Carr. There is the sense while watching the 1926 silent German masterwork Faust that director F.W. Murnau and company are…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. This handsome, beautifully illustrated, well-researched book of over 400 pages (from Il Buono Publishing) is another example of…

By Christopher Sharrett. I often show students the opening credits and establishing sequence to David O. Selznick’s garish, appalling 1939 film about…

A Book Review by Cleaver Patterson. In the Author’s Note introducing English Gothic – Classic Horror Cinema 1897-2015 – the newly updated…

By Elias Savada. Music and cinema are both universal languages. I can’t think of another film that blends the best of these…

By Tony Williams. Unlike previous DVDs I’ve reviewed, Here Comes Mr. Jordan is my first and highly pleasurable viewing of a film I’d…

By Elias Savada. During his initial foray into filmmaking back in the 1990s, Whit Stillman was being hailed as a conquering hero…

A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. Jack Sargeant’s new book, Flesh and Excess: On Underground Film, is an exploration of a…

By Tony Williams. If Robin Wood once said on a DVD feature, “If you don’t like Marnie, then you don’t like Cinema”,…

By Elias Savada. Unless you’re orbiting the art universe, particularly in the vicinity of its comically subversive galaxy, you’ve probably never heard of…

A Book Review by Matthew Fullerton. New Tunisian Cinema is a timely book, released three years after the revolution that toppled Ben Ali,…

By John Duncan Talbird. A few years ago, I was with my wife in some Brooklyn hamburger joint waiting for our food.…

By Elias Savada. French director-writer Jacques Audiard, a multiple Cannes Film Festival prize nominee and winner, and constant trophy collector at the César…

By Chris Neilan. They may never have matched the creative successes of Scorsese & De Niro, the genre-defining feats of John Wayne…

By Elias Savada. Terence Davies does love his literary adaptations. His 2011 romantic drama The Deep Blue Sea was based on Terence Rattigan’s…

A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. In November 1974, when Werner Herzog was thirty-two, he walked from Munich to Paris, over five…

By Paul Risker. “The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” – Gordon Gekko…

By Jeremy Carr. Ben Braddock, Dustin Hoffman’s titular character from Mike Nichols’ 1967 film, The Graduate, is first seen staring straight ahead…

By Christopher Sharrett. When I think about the melodrama I tend to focus on the masterpieces of Max Ophuls, Douglas Sirk, Vincente…

By Tony Williams. Whether available theatrically or 16mm, VHS, and previous DVD formats, Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950) has always…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. Today, it has become a tedious commonplace to listen to erroneous fallacies such as Fukayama’s “The…

A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. Many film lovers will enjoy Patton Oswalt’s new memoir, Silver Screen Fiend, mainly because he’s…

By Cleaver Patterson. At one point, about half way into Marguerite (2015), the drama by French writer/director Xavier Giannoli, singing teacher Atos…

By Amy R. Handler. Reaching back to time’s beginnings, Orlacs Hände (1924) forever touched the future, but at what price? Robert Wiene’s…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. The work of Saul Bass is familiar to those impressed by credit openings of The Man with…

By Cleaver Patterson. Anyone taking it upon themselves to comment on a film by the master of the giallo thriller Dario Argento…

By Elias Savada. An ugly, dirty war begets the airing of some nasty laundry. That’s the simple historical concept – and quite an…

By John Duncan Talbird. First-time feature writer-director Chloé Zhao’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me opens and closes with the narration of teenage Lakota…

By Cleaver Patterson. Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) is a young bunny with big ideas. Living in the rural town of Bunnyburrow her…

By Elias Savada. Other than a kitchen catastrophe, there’s not a sloppy moment in Trey Edward Shults’ micro-budgeted, crowdsourced Krisha, an incredibly well-constructed…

By Elias Savada. The perception that people of significantly older age can’t control their destinies, particularly if dementia is knocking at their door,…

By Paul Risker. I still recall the scene in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003) when the father tells his offspring that they…

A Book Review by Tony Williams. This book falls into the now familiar category of Cityscape Studies but focuses on representations of…

By Elias Savada. The ominous hum of unease that saturates Swiss-born director Michael Krummenacher’s effective yet derivative German thriller Sibylle – being sold…

By Elias Savada. Spiritual and haunting in its low decibel manner, the New England coming-of-age drama Neptune is an indie effort that follows…

I, Shakespeare by Anonymous and Last Will. & Testament »

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…

By Jeremy Carr. Aside from his general lack of recognition as one of film history’s great comedians, the most tragic part of…

By Mathijs Peters. Introduction Arthur Schopenhauer’s philosophy, which Samuel Beckett defined as “an intellectual justification of unhappiness – the greatest that has…