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 the same name, a program that was extraordinarily popular for a brief period in the mid 1960s in America and abroad. Taking its cue from James Bond in […]
Reviewing the narratively challenged Masaan
By Devapriya Sanyal. To me Masaan (2015) didn’t give the feeling of eternal life flowing by, in its depiction its multifarious stories, set beside the silently flowing Ganges. The river is witness to a love blooming between two young people as also the death of one, it is also the […]
Many Selves: The Horror and Fantasy Films of Paul Wegener (2012)
October 12, 2015
A book review by Tony Williams. Though mostly well known to western audiences for playing the title characters in The Student of Prague (1913), The Golem (1920), and Rex Ingram‘s The Magician (1926) as well as appearances in Nazi-era films such as Der Grosse Koenig (1941) and Kolberg (1945), Paul Wegener’s […]
An Ogre’s Hide: Samad and Foolad Zereh, the Ogre
By Ramin S. Khanjani. For many avid followers of Iranian cinema across the world, the experience of this national cinema justifiably doesn’t go much beyond recent works of festival fixtures such as Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi and now Asghar Farhadi. Now imagine seating these fans in front of a screen […]
The Ethnographer of Fantasy: Woody Allen’s Irrational Man
By Axel Andersson. The middle-aged philosophy professor Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) pulls up to a liberal arts college in Newport in an old Volvo, liberally helping himself to the content of his stainless steel hip flask containing vintage single malt. The young students move along a mock-US version of already […]
The Cerebral Thrills of The Messenger
October 5, 2015
By Cleaver Patterson. As the autumn nights draw in and winter fast approaches, the season seems more disposed to cinematic tales which induce unease within the viewer. The time is then perfect for the release of The Messenger (2015), a psychological chiller from BAFTA and Emmy winning British director David […]
The Rise of NWA in Straight Outta Compton
October 5, 2015
By Kyle Huffman. In the first scene of Straight Outta Compton (2015), Easy E (Jason Mitchell) barely escapes a drug den being raided by the LAPD. This harrowing sequence feels like something ripped right out of a war movie, as the confusion of overwhelming force scatters the opposition like roaches. But […]
The 2015 New York Film Festival Report
October 3, 2015
By Gary M. Kramer. The 53rd New York Film Festival runs through October 11 and there are several outstanding features by established and returning filmmakers playing at the fest. Here is a rundown of five notable films. Athina Rachel Tsangari has been chosen as the official New York Film Festival […]
Bitter Earth: Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth
September 28, 2015
By James Slaymaker. Alex Ross Perry’s latest feature, Queen of Earth, explores similar thematic territory to his first three (Impolex, The Color Wheel and Listen Up Philip), but marks a radical expansion of his artistic palette in regards to both form and content. What largely makes the film fascinating when considered alongside his existing […]
Monstrous Gaze: The Quandary of Spectatorship in La dolce vita
September 28, 2015
By William Repass. In the thematic arc formed by Fellini’s body of work, La dolce vita (1960) can be said to represent a pivot: his first film in which various reactions—against a repressive Catholic milieu, against the formal and ideological constraints of Italian neo-realism—coalesce into a fully-realized counter-aesthetic, incontestable both […]