Review

By Tony Williams. Whether available theatrically or 16mm, VHS, and previous DVD formats, Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950) has always ranked high as a great Hollywood film either in the realms of authorship or genre. This year Criterion has added the film to its collection and this version […]

A Book Review by Tony Williams. Today, it has become a tedious commonplace to listen to erroneous fallacies such as Fukayama’s “The End of History” – to which one can reply, “whose ideologically written history?” Since that time of unquestioned neo-liberal hegemonic control, other issues have appeared, including dismissals of a challenging […]

A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. Many film lovers will enjoy Patton Oswalt’s new memoir, Silver Screen Fiend, mainly because he’s one of us. He and his friends – “sprocket fiends” all – when they’re not lurking in revival houses or art house cinemas, spend their times arguing in […]

By Cleaver Patterson.  At one point, about half way into Marguerite (2015), the drama by French writer/director Xavier Giannoli, singing teacher Atos Pezzini (Michel Fau) is trying, diplomatically, to describe his pupil Marguerite Dumont (Catherine Frot) to some of those who have assembled to hear her latest performance. Where Marguerite […]

By Amy R. Handler. Reaching back to time’s beginnings, Orlacs Hände (1924) forever touched the future, but at what price? Robert Wiene’s cinematic interpretation of Maurice Renard’s Les Mains d’Orlac (1920), cannot be neatly labeled expressionist in spite of its creation near the end of Weimar’s expressionist movement. Certainly there […]

A Book Review by Tony Williams. The work of Saul Bass is familiar to those impressed by credit openings of The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Cowboy (1958), Bonjour Tristesse (1958) Vertigo (1958), Psycho, (1960) Walk on the Wild Side (1962), Anatomy  of a Murder (1959), Bunny Lake is Missing […]

By Cleaver Patterson. Anyone taking it upon themselves to comment on a film by the master of the giallo thriller Dario Argento is, to some extent, staking their reputation as a critic and writer.  No-one will ever get it one hundred per cent right.  Aficionados of his work — of […]

By Elias Savada. An ugly, dirty war begets the airing of some nasty laundry. That’s the simple historical concept – and quite an emotional memory for the too many South Americans who suffered through the bad times – driving millions of fascinated fans to Pablo Trapero’s new feature The Clan (El […]

By John Duncan Talbird. First-time feature writer-director Chloé Zhao’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me opens and closes with the narration of teenage Lakota Indian Johnny Winter (John Reddy). The first image is of him barebacked on a horse, voiceover emotionlessly informing us about the wisdom he’s gained breaking horses: “Anything that […]

By Cleaver Patterson. Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) is a young bunny with big ideas. Living in the rural town of Bunnyburrow her parents expect her to follow in the family tradition, growing and selling various fruit and vegetables. But Judy yearns to go to the fabled city of Zootopia, where […]