A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. Like the exhibition itself, the publication is first and foremost a celebration of the singular writer-director.” My first Hayao Miyazaki film – 1989’s Kiki’s Delivery Service – was like nothing I’d (wrongly) come to expect from animation: by turns contemplative and silly, wistful and innocent, it felt closer in spirit […]
Dune: An Oversized, Delightful Space Opera
By Elias Savada. Sure, it’s loud and possibly confusing for those viewers who haven’t tapped into the 1965 text…. But this go round [for the screen], all cylinders are firing.” Ah, the wide-screen grandeur that is Dune! All that sand makes me relish the epic 70mm moments more than a […]
King Hu’s Cinematic Sublime: Raining in the Mountain (1979)
By Tony Williams. The spiritual is always a marginal element in Hu’s films that deal with the eruption of violent forces attempting to dominate others before some temporary victory occurs, leaving the survivors to live and fight another day….” This is the last of Eureka’s King Hu DVDs available for […]
An Adrenaline-Fueled Race to The Rescue
By Elias Savada. Unfolding with military precision, enhanced by a steady, determined pacing…. We can be an ingenious species. When bad things happen, there are any number of special people who come up with solutions to seemingly unsolvable, life-threatening problems. The crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft is often called mankind’s greatest feat of improvised […]
A Bond Finale, Directed by a Yankee: No Time to Die
By Elias Savada. In other words, nothing new. Same slick package, different psychopathic enemy.” Are you ready to put your troubles aside and hopefully not worry about the semi-masked fool sitting a few seats away from you in the multiplex (for 163 minutes, a Bond record) as you watch Daniel […]
Documenting Personal History in Belgrade: Marko Grba Singh on Rampart
By Yun-hua Chen. The idea of the film didn’t stem from the footage, but from the apartment. My parents decided to sell it, and it was empty for several months. I have lived there for 25 years, and once per month I would go there…. And then I realized that […]
“Stories About Heroes Travel Faster Than Bullets”: Jean Luc Herbulot’s Saloum (TIFF 2021)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. 84 minutes of pure African genre mayhem, with little interest in pausing long enough for you to catch your breath….with this Senegalese western-action-horror hybrid Herbulot is here to sure as hell make you recognize [the historical context] on a sensory, emotional level.” Strap in; Jean Luc Herbulot’s […]
Annette: a Coming-of-Age Miracle
by Levan Tskhovrebadze. It seems as the French director torments himself over personal misfortune; however, he summons paradoxes of life and transpires this absurdist tragedy as a coming-of-age spectacle for the baby miracle Annette.” “Each man kills the thing he lovesby each let this be heard”–Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde’s gloomy […]
Lay Down Your Souls – Venom: Let There Be Carnage
By Elias Savada. A frothy, silly flick, full of gory hijinks and dumbster fun. Let the slapstick continue.” I wonder if anyone at Columbia Pictures, the studio that has that small chunk of the other Marvel action figures that Disney hasn’t encased, remembers that it was also the movie company […]
The Many Saints of Newark: A Fond, Bloody Prequel
By Elias Savada. Brutal and deadly, as expected, and a fiercely written gangster drama, the film is also a fitting period piece….” The best things about HBO’s The Sopranos were the deeply emotional heft of its characters and, of course, the brutality they constantly extracted upon one another. Fans of […]