By Amy R Handler. Max Winkler’s debut feature, Ceremony(2010), puts a new spin on the old coming-of-age tale with edgy sensitivity, cryptic characters and a script replete with subtle ambiguity. The plot is familiar. 23-year-old Sam (Michael Angarano) is a budding author of children’s books, but much like with Sam […]
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark: A Fairy Tale Remake
By Anna Arnman. Against her will, a young girl, Sally (Bailee Madison), moves in with her estranged father Alex (Guy Pearce) and his new girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes) in an enormous old house called Blackwood Mansion. Alex is an architect restoring the house with the help of Kim, an interior […]
Orgasm Inc.
By Amy R Handler. The war between pharmaceutical companies and the personal injury lawyers fighting them can be seen on virtually every American and New Zealand television channel, no matter what time the day or night. No wonder so many people are depressed. How could they not be when they […]
Born in Suez: Khaled El Hagar
November 19, 2011
At the inaugural launch of the UK’s recurring Arabic Film Festival, Omar Kholeif, the festival’s director caught up with the Egyptian film director, Khaled El Hagar, after a retrospective screening of El Hagar’s first feature film, Little Dreams (Ahlam Saghira, 1993). Here is some of what Khaled had to say: […]
Eugène Green
By Ken Chen. Susan Sontag once called transparency – the luminousness of the thing in itself – the highest value in contemporary film. By this, she meant the way Renoir and Ozu remind us of life. What then should we make of the occluded films of Eugène Green, which invoke […]
‘Where there are Mines Lives the Devil’ – Altiplano
By Amy R Handler. Award winning filmmakers Peter Brosens and Jessica Hope Woodworth have woven magic like none other in their most recent feature, Altiplano(2009). But viewers beware… This highly potent masterpiece is not for children, or the faint of heart. Perhaps the sorcery lies in Altiplano’s form, which simultaneously […]
Bride Flight: A Psychological Joyride
By Amy R Handler. Bride Flight (2008) is a haunting masterpiece that combines the strength of Dr. Zhivago with the ambiguity of The End of the Affair. The result is a psychological joyride of epic proportions. Based upon the bestselling, novel of the same name, Bride Flight focuses upon three […]
Warren Beatty: A Hollywood Career
By Gary Bettinson. In 1967, movie actor Warren Beatty assumed the mantle of producer with Bonnie and Clyde. His decision to harness greater production responsibility not only coincided with a pivotal shift in Hollywood’s history; it also contributed to this shift, establishing Beatty as a significant force in Hollywood’s changing […]
On the Endless Road to Nowhere
By Amy R Handler. It’s difficult to know where reality ends and fiction begins in Monte Hellman’s most recent movie, Road to Nowhere(2010). And even when we’re informed that what we’ve just seen is true, we feel less at ease then ever – and wonder what games Hellman, and scriptwriter […]
A Somewhat Gentle Man
By Amy R Handler. Comedy is one of those strange and elusive phenomena that troubles even the most sensitive critical connoisseurs. It is all the more difficult to capture and sustain in a feature length film, and many have tried and failed. Luckily for us, Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland […]