Stroszek (1977): “Americans…believe that they are normal, that they make sense, and that the rest of the world is exotic. They do not seem to understand that they are the most exotic people in the world right now” –Werner Herzog By John Duncan Talibird. How do you write about Werner […]
“Somebody has to do Something!”: Mainline Protestant Moral Ambiguity in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (2017)
Richmond B. Adams
September 3, 2020
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By Richmond B. Adams. Schrader presents an alarming cultural fragmentation in which American enemies are no longer German Nazis, Soviet bureaucrats, foreign terrorists…. Americans have come to view perhaps even their next door neighbors as adversaries to the death….” Upon the release of Paul’s Schrader’s First Reformed during the early […]
In Search of the “Sonic Novum”: The Sound of Things to Come: An Audible History of the Science Fiction Film by Trace Reddell
Decoder (1984) By Tony Williams. Much of value appears in this book, and the hard read required is often worth it to discover some unique insights.” Emerging from the prestigious University of Minnesota Press, The Sound of Things to Come is a weighty tome in more than one sense. As […]
A Comfortable Troublemaker – Michael Haneke: Interviews, edited by Roy Grundmann, Fatima Naqvi, and Colin Root
Code Unknown (2000) I try to rouse the viewer from his status as a victim in order to give him a more flexible position in relation to the film.” By Jeremy Carr. There’s a penetrating coldness that commonly characterizes the films of Michael Haneke. Rightly or wrongly, similar notions of […]
Siberia and the Ascension of Abel Ferrara
Ferrara is determinedly consistent in his devotion to his core visions, and as hungry as ever to discover new ways to express them.” By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. At some point over the last decade, my initially half-jokingly insistence that Abel Ferrara had become the thinking person’s Lars Von Trier became less […]
Wuxia Majesty: King Hu’s The Fate of Lee Khan (Eureka Masters of Cinema)
By Tony Williams. Hu recognizes that victory is not just the end but also rather another tedious part of a successive number of moves leading to the same circular pattern.” King Hu’s “Inn Trilogy” began with Come Drink with Me (1966), shot in Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers’ studio, and continued […]
“Genetic Memory of War”: Elem Klimov’s Come and See (Criterion Collection)
The idea,” states Klimov’s brother and collaborator, German Klimov, “was to tell the truth.” By Jeremy Carr. Elem Klimov’s Come and See, an unremitting 1985 opus and one of Soviet cinema’s great anti-war dramas, enjoyed a swift and positive period of reevaluation when a new restoration made its theatrical rounds […]
Humans, Nature, and Moving Images – The Work of Terrence Malick: Time-Based Ecocinema by Gabriella Blasi
T. R. Merchant-Knudsen
July 6, 2020
A Book Review Essay by T. R. Merchant-Knudsen. Terrence Malick’s name remains tinged with a sense of mystique and the aura of philosophical images within his sprawling films. His filmography echoes and reverberates through time in ways that often appear nonlinear; in these places, images of nature and their intersection […]
Buster Keaton’s Genius, Derailed: The Cameraman (Criterion Collection)
By Thomas Gladysz. Film history is littered with the stories of stars whose careers were derailed by their studios, and themselves. Orson Welles and Erich von Stroheim are two of the best known examples. Each saw their careers go off the tracks for reasons that had as much to do […]
Rise of the Female Director: Liberating Hollywood by Maya Montañez Smuckler
Madeline Hawk
July 1, 2020
A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971) A Book Review Essay by Madeline Hawk. 83 years after Dorothy Arzner became the first female to direct a Hollywood feature film in 1927, Kathryn Bigelow became the first to win an Oscar for Best Director in 2010. But what happened in the 83 […]