By Greg Burris. Early on in the Tunisian horror film Dachra (Abdelhamid Bouchnak, 2018), we see a class of university students as they listen to their professor’s instructions for their final assignment. The students are to arrange themselves into groups and produce a filmed investigative report on a subject of […]
A Complete Man of the World – Jean Gabin: The Actor Who Was France by Joseph Harriss
August 27, 2019
A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. Usually, I’m hesitant when presented with another biography for review. Despite the dedication and research involved, there often occurs a fundamental similarity in approach and, sometimes, lack of critical and insightful qualities when covering the actor’s films themselves. What makes them distinctive? Is […]
A Subjective and Concise Triumph – The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media and the Radical Imagination by Greg Burris
August 24, 2019
A Book Review Essay by Ali Moosavi. There is an old adage that oppression and suppression fuels creativity. In the world of cinema, this is best exemplified in Palestinian Cinema. For a nation of less than five million people, it is undoubtedly the shining star in the Arab Cinema. In […]
An Invigorating Romp: Murray Pomerance’s A Dream of Hitchcock
August 24, 2019
A Book Review by John W. Fawell. The title of Murray Pomerance’s latest book on the films of Alfred Hitchcock, A Dream of Hitchcock (SUNY Press, 2018), refers to both the book’s content and its form. Pomerance means this book to be a study of the recurring motif of dreams […]
Coming of Age, in Detail: Third Wife
Janine Gericke
August 22, 2019
By Janine Gericke. There is a significant amount of symbolism throughout Ash Mayfair’s feature debut The Third Wife. The director and cinematographer Chananun Chotrungroj juxtapose the nuances of the lush natural settings of Vietnam with the rigid 19th-century patriarchal society surrounding the film’s female characters. The film follows 14-year-old May […]
The Journey, Not the Destination: Godard x 3 from Kino Lorber
Jeremy Carr
August 21, 2019
By Jeremy Carr. After concluding what was ostensibly his second phase of filmmaking – if one accepts the admittedly blurred lines that divide a comparatively commercial feature like Weekend (1967) and the ultra-political, pseudo-documentary works of his so-called Dziga Vertov period – Jean-Luc Godard embarked on the third major stage in his career. Launching […]
The Truth Lies….: Cold Case Hammarskjöld
August 19, 2019
By Michael Sandlin. It’s now been eight years since Scandinavian prankster filmmaker Mads Brugger donned his pith helmet and jodhpurs in Angola to impersonate a blood diamond buyer – recording on film the whole farcical mess that ensues for his 2011 documentary feature The Ambassador. Now mad Mads is back in Africa in […]
City of Losers, Losing City: Pacino, New York, and the New Hollywood Cinema
Heather Hendershot
August 19, 2019
By Heather Hendershot. The following is excerpted from When the Movies Mattered: The New Hollywood Revisited, edited by Jonathan Kirshner and Jon Lewis (Cornell University Press, 2019), by permission of the press. In 1965, John Lindsay beat out Abraham Beame and William F. Buckley Jr. to be elected mayor of New […]
An Old Soul Gone Too Soon: Love, Antosha
Yun-hua Chen
August 16, 2019
By Yun-hua Chen. Paying tribute to the late actor Anton Yelchin’s life, this biographical documentary extends far beyond his acting career. As Garret Price’s directorial debut premiered at the Sundance three years after the freak car accident in 2016 which took Yelchin’s life at the age of 27, the film […]
Mike Wallace is Here – and Isn’t
Christopher Sharrett
August 14, 2019
By Christopher Sharrett. The premises of the new documentary Mike Wallace is Here are contradictory, and I suppose meant ironically so. The late TV journalist, most famous for helping start the television “magazine” 60 Minutes, is portrayed as the founding father of hardball electronic journalism – and a shameless huckster who sold […]