A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. Having reviewed books on cinema, one of its main pleasures is discovering unexplored clefts in the art’s brief history. There’s always something new. Did you know, for instance, that in the early days of cinema, studios employed photographers to capture onset moments rather than […]
The Fault in Our Films: Hollywood and the Illness Narrative
By Sheana Ochoa. Anyone who has watched the scene in the trailer of The Theory of Everything when Stephen Hawking’s character pulls himself up a staircase knows the film is a heavy hitter. Atop the stairs a robust, healthy baby curiously stares down at his helpless father in a macabre […]
The Babadook: Ghosts in the Bedroom
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 has fallen on hard times in the last quarter-century. I find the film engaging, although my enthusiasm is qualified. It is incoherent at the narrative and ideological levels, […]
Still The Enemy Within (Owen Gower, 2014, UK)
By Anthony Killick. Owen Gower’s debut feature film offers a narrative of the 1984-85 miners strike, the loss of which has triggered three subsequent decades of neoliberal power consolidation. If history belongs to the winners, then this film proves that at certain points the winners will have to make concessions. […]
American Sniper: War’s Glories
By Christopher Sharrett. For a number of years there has been considerable critical palaver about the “ambiguities” of Clint Eastwood’s ideology, with monographs and essays on the topic published at a regular pace. Eastwood himself once said “I do the stuff John Wayne would never do,” meaning he, as Old […]
Bridging the Divides: The Fine Lines of Crime Across 110th Street
January 15, 2015
By Jeremy Carr. The holdup that begins the 1972 film Across 110th Street pits a trio of low-level amateurs against an established, well organized and, up to this point, efficient group of professional criminals. The end game is a case full of money, but what is ultimately achieved, more than […]
Revulsion and Derision: Antichrist, The Human Centipede II and the British Press
By Martin Smith. Despite increased transparency and liberalisation at the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) in recent decades, Britain remains one of the most censorious democratic countries in the world. Annette Kuhn’s model of censorship, outlined in her Cinema, Censorship and Sexuality: 1909-1925, details censorship as a process “produced […]
World Film Locations: Toronto: 2014
January 11, 2015
A Book Review By Carmen Siu. One hundred and eighty years young, the city of Toronto has a lot to boast about. ‘T-Dot’ is celebrated as a world-class city for its unique cultural diversity; vibrant music, film and literary scenes; and even, at times, its sports teams. But you’re more likely […]
Lost in Space
By Rajko Radovic. “I’m gonna wait till the stars come out. And see them twinkle in your eyes. I’m gonna wait till the midnight hour.” (Wilson “the Wicked” Pickett) “Nature has thrown away the key; and woe unto that fateful curiosity that might once manage to peer out through a […]
Foxcatcher: Wealth, Power, Repression
By Christopher Sharrett. I was far more impressed than I thought I might be with Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, a compelling film at various subtle yet complex levels. I should say first that as a person who spent his early life in Southeast Pennsylvania, I recall the John du Pont murder […]