By Christopher Sharrett. Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves was one of the few films of the last season that deserved real recognition and got only a little; it was swamped, as per custom, by the usual blockbusters and played only in the cities and university towns. Reichardt is emerging as an […]
The 71st Annual Venice Film Festival
September 28, 2014
By Zhuo-Ning Su. The Venice Film Festival, the worldwide oldest festival celebrating cinema, ended its 71st run earlier this month (August 27- September 6). Traditionally ranked alongside Cannes and Berlin as one of the most important stops on the cinematic calendar, Venice has seen its profile in the festival world […]
Phoenix (2014)
September 25, 2014
By Zhuo-Ning Su. Marking the sixth collaboration of what’s shaping up to be the most compelling and fruitful auteur-actor duo in modern German cinema, writer/director Christian Petzold’s Phoenix starring Nina Hoss is a well-realized drama with a singular concept soaring in its intellectual reach and emotional resonance. Set in a […]
Project Cancer: Ulay’s Journal from November to November
September 22, 2014
By Noah Charney. For performance artists, their bodies are the canvas on which to paint, the marble from which to sculpt. Some have pierced their bodies with pins, others with vicious hooks linked to chains from which they hang by their nearly-torn flesh, as in some grotesque fresco of martyrdom […]
Joseph Lawson, Genre Filmmaker: An Interview
September 22, 2014
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Joseph Lawson is an American filmmaker who is an unabashed special effects fan, action movie enthusiast, and utterly pragmatic about how films get made today in a rapaciously competitive environment. He’s a commercial filmmaker, working in Hollywood, making films as entertainment. Along the way, he’s getting […]
Film4 FrightFest 2014
September 19, 2014
By Cleaver Patterson. FrightFest, the London based film festival which takes place each year at the end of August, prides itself in showcasing the best of horror, both international and homegrown. This year’s event was no exception, with more films than ever before showing in this its fifteenth year. With […]
The Passion of Life: Federico Fellini’s Il Bidone
September 14, 2014
By Robert Kenneth Dator. As with any truly influential director, Federico Fellini—simply, Fellini—has been talked to death. However, with so much talk generated through so much derivative thought, it is possible to perpetuate precept rather than forge original observation. So, let us come out from behind all the humanism, neo-realism, […]
Starred Up (2014)
September 9, 2014
By Sam Littman. Within the first fifteen minutes of David Mackenzie’s prison drama Starred Up, it becomes clear that the titular felon, 19-year old Eric Love (Jack O’Connell), belongs in prison, though in this case the offense that sent him to a Young Offender Institution and the misbehavior that caused […]
Santo in the Museum of the Mexican Film Industry
September 8, 2014
By John Burns. It seems that a number of historians and critics of Mexican film would be happier if the films starring lucha libre wrestler Santo had never been produced. One British university’s website on Mexican cinema called the Santo films “invariably stupid.” In Carl J. Mora’s exhaustive study of […]
The Boxtrolls (2014)
September 5, 2014
By Cleaver Patterson. American-made animated films appear to have a fascination with middle European cities and architecture. Take The Boxtrolls for instance: the latest work from Laika Entertainment—the production company behind recent hits Coraline (2009) and Paranorman (2012)—has a predominance of gabled rooftops and twisting cobbled streets, which not only lends the […]