By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “If civilization goes down, that Would be an event to contemplate.” (Robinson Jeffers, “May-June, 1940”) Human-centered popular folktales of Apocalypse and Doomsday narratives of every imaginable scenario are undeniably as powerful and plentiful as they have been from the beginnings of human narrative tradition. Indeed, apocalyptic […]
Dark Humor in Films of the 1960s – Part 1
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “There’s a story about an adolescent boy who was taken to a psychiatrist. The doctor drew a rectangle on a sheet of paper and showed it to the boy. ‘What does it make you think of?’ he asked. The boy looked at it and said, ‘Sex.’ […]
Central Thematic Conflict in 21 Grams and Babel
By Anna Weinstein. Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga is best known for writing ensemble films about the effects of tragedy on human life—how tragedy can both pull apart and bring together. His scripts present a kaleidoscopic view of human interconnection, that people across cultures, borders, and class systems are, when all is […]
The Aura in the age of New Materialism
By Jonathan Rozenkrantz. When Walter Benjamin proclaimed the aura lost, he was hardly writing in grief. Being a Marxist, he saw in the means of technical reproduction – primarily manifested in the cinematic medium – art’s final liberation from the bonds of ritual and tradition. The “aura” – basically signifying […]
Subverting Capitalism and Blind Faith: Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs
By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “It’s not a likable movie. Even me, myself, I hate the film.” (Pascal Laugier) Pascal Laugier’s radically experimental horror film Martyrs (2008) is a persuasive and explosive leveling of capitalism, which is not limited to materialism, the Catholic Church, the cynical genre of torture porn, and […]
On the Beach and Humanist Cinema
By Christopher Sharrett. Any attempt at a reevaluation of Stanley Kramer must confront some critical resistances about this director. The common wisdom has it that he was a heavy-handed maker of “message” films (immediately summoning Samuel Goldwyn’s rather repugnant quote about messages and Western Union), guilty of misjudgments, and representative […]
Contemporary Neorealist Principles in Abbas Kiarostami’s Filmmaking (1997 – 2005)
By Luke Buckle. ABSTRACT Iranian film has in recent decades comprised an increasingly important and influential cinema. The Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979 paved the way for freedom of artistic and literary expression, communicating a new generation of unheard voices in Iranian society. More specifically Iranian cinema has progressed in […]
That Hurtful Mask – in memory of Erland Josephson (1923-2012)
By Jonathan Rozenkrantz. As I watch Fanny and Alexander (1982) for the first time since childhood, I am caught not so much in the grip of Ingmar Bergman’s “cinemagic” filmmaking (which, in my opinion, is at its weakest in this particular film). Rather, I find myself in an uneasy clinch […]
Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist – A Closer Look
By Peter Lavetti. Michel Hazanavicius is a brilliant filmmaker, an equal to Murnau and Hitchcock in his ability to compose images that propel a story forward. There is no “fat” here. It is obvious that not a filmic second is wasted or ill-placed. The film plays out with the terseness […]
On Stifling Families, Diana Lynn, and a Killer Cat
By John Bredin. Track of the Cat, a 1954 early Cinemascope offering—produced, curiously enough, by John Wayne—had an unhappy childhood to say the least. It was thoroughly rejected by both critics and the public alike. So said Brooklyn College film professor Foster Hirsch, while presenting this odd alchemy of family […]