By Elias Savada. The smog hangs lightly over the partly cloudy skies of Mexico City as this story begins. A guitar with a Latin beat grabs the soundtrack. Trumpets blare. People walk the streets munching on tacos. The camera catches a sidewalk display with garish magazine covers adorned with body […]
A Long, Strange Trip: Sam Klemke’s Time Machine
November 9, 2015
By Elias Savada. Australian director-writer Matthew Bate (responsible for the fly-on-the-wall 2011 documentary Shut Up Little Man: An Audio Misadventure) took an interest in his latest film’s central character after watching a video by him on YouTube that year. More on that later. Sam Klemke’s Time Machine, a work compiled […]
The Visual Desolation of Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario
November 9, 2015
By Kyle Huffman. “Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out of the frame.” This seemingly direct estimation of the art form by legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese defines movies as utilizing first and foremost one sense: the visual. The portrait design of the silver screen traditionally […]
Falling Apart Badly: Miss You Already
November 6, 2015
By Elias Savada. I suspect the issues I have with the new Drew Barrymore-Toni Collette BFF “dramedy” Miss You Already (including a 112-minute, too-long running time) is how overwrought and familiar it seems. Despite the earnest approach from its two stars (who also serve, with Christopher Smith, as producers), there isn’t […]
Dread in the Family: Luciferous
October 31, 2015
By Elias Savada. An escalating madness is the center of the disturbing world of Luciferous, a slow boil screamer presented at this year’s Spookyfest. The normalcy of city life for young, intelligent professionals Alex and Mahsa, and their vibrant 7-year-old daughter Mina is stretched to the limits of sanity, as […]
Reviewing the narratively challenged Masaan
By Devapriya Sanyal. To me Masaan (2015) didn’t give the feeling of eternal life flowing by, in its depiction its multifarious stories, set beside the silently flowing Ganges. The river is witness to a love blooming between two young people as also the death of one, it is also the […]
Beyond the Resolution: On the Series Witnesses (Les Témoins, 2015)
October 13, 2015
By Paul Risker. From the hustle and bustle of Paris, the stage for Spiral (Engrenages, (2005-)) and Braquo (2009-2014), the new French crime series Witnesses (Les Témoins, (2015)) retreats to the small coastal town of Lille to offer us a change of scenery for the latest serving of Gallic crime […]
Many Selves: The Horror and Fantasy Films of Paul Wegener (2012)
October 12, 2015
A book review by Tony Williams. Though mostly well known to western audiences for playing the title characters in The Student of Prague (1913), The Golem (1920), and Rex Ingram‘s The Magician (1926) as well as appearances in Nazi-era films such as Der Grosse Koenig (1941) and Kolberg (1945), Paul Wegener’s […]
New Age Emptiness: Jose Nester Marquez’s Reversion
October 12, 2015
By Elias Savada. There’s a glossy bio-tech veneer bubbling up in Jose Nester Marquez’s new feature, Reversion. Despite its high concept sci-fi storyline (co-scripted with Elissa Matseuda, based on a story by Marquez), apparently set in Los Angeles in the very near future, there is a low budget feel that pervades […]
The Ethnographer of Fantasy: Woody Allen’s Irrational Man
By Axel Andersson. The middle-aged philosophy professor Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) pulls up to a liberal arts college in Newport in an old Volvo, liberally helping himself to the content of his stainless steel hip flask containing vintage single malt. The young students move along a mock-US version of already […]