Interview

By Paul Risker. Writer-director of The Cooler (2003) and Running Scared (2006), Wayne Kramer has worked exclusively in independent cinema since the early 1990s. Once again, he walks the line between insider and outlier with Pawn Shop Chronicles (2013, renamed Hustlers for the UK release). Speaking with Film International, Kramer […]

By Irv Slifkin. For 30 years, Woody Wise has entertained his friends on Saturdays in his Los Angeles-area home. The fun usually starts with donuts or bagels in the morning, followed by a healthy serving of a movie serial, a short subject or a “B” western and a vintage feature […]

By Paul Risker. Just as a virus needs a host, there is a broad collection of films placed both within and outside of the horror genre that employ viral infection. These films tap into our innate fears of one another, and the obsessive compulsive disorders of the fear of human […]

By Anna Weinstein. Heatstroke, starring Stephen Dorff, Svetlana Metkina, and Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones), tells the story of a female search and rescue worker put to the ultimate test of survival when her boyfriend is murdered in the African desert and she’s tasked with evading his killers while protecting […]

By Paul Risker. Every art form has a story, and recalling Mark Cousins’ description of film being a grass roots art form raises the question what term would be most fitting to describe video games, the youngest of the art forms. Despite their youthful age, the story of video games […]

By Anna Weinstein. Nikki Braendlin’s film As High as the Sky tells the story of Margaret, a woman struggling to control her OCD symptoms when her estranged sister and niece show up unexpectedly, causing her to finally acknowledge the root of her emotional problems. Starring Caroline Fogarty (from the series […]

By Paul Risker. From B-picture phenomenon Sharknado (2013), an abducted daughter in the revenge thriller Rage (2014), a rendezvous with history in A Conversation: Anne Frank Meets God (2014), to the fantasy leanings as the title role in Jem and the Holograms (2016) – the past, present and future has […]

By Matthew Sorrento. Of all the tales of cinematic greats meeting, it ranks as one of the best: in 1997, actor Doug Jones arrived to a night re-shoot of a film called Mimic to do creature effects. On the second day during lunch, the film’s director – the still little-known Guillermo […]

By Paul Risker. There are those films that offer a visceral experience – an explosion of sound, image and color. Then there are those that turn the lens of the camera into a window frame for us to gaze upon and experience other cultures. Nabil Ayouch’s Horses of God (2014) […]

By Matthew Sorrento. Beginning as a rather conventional documentary – at times so familiar we fear it will play like formulaic television – The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne soon finds a matter-of-fact style that nicely reflects its subject. A career jewelry thief, Doris Payne (born 1930) has used […]