Review

A Book Review by Tony Williams. It is very rare to encounter a critical work written by someone who combines the expertise of university professor, film historian, and film editor. Yet such is the position of Paul Seydor who is not only an Oscar nominated film editor with many credits […]

By Jeremy Carr.  An Autumn Afternoon was director Yasujirô Ozu’s final film. He passed away a year after its release, on his 60th birthday, Dec. 12, 1963. Knowing that the film is indeed his last, it’s easy to look at it in terms of being a sort of grand summation […]

By Elias Savada. With all the unrest in the Middle East, it seems that one of the few places where Israelis can gather these days for a good laugh would be at the cinema. Yet, despite the best efforts of its cast, Hunting Elephants is a tame comedic excursion into a […]

By Cleaver Patterson. Occasionally a film comes along which, though what unfolds on-screen is far from erudite, the final result manages the difficult feat of combining heart and spectacle to an equal degree. Fast & Furious 7 – the latest instalment in the worldwide cinematic phenomenon – will likely be […]

By Paul Risker.  Permeating contemporary film and television is the sense of an oppression of foreign language drama within storytelling, whose intentional or unintentional objective is the promotion of English as the officially sanctioned language of film and television drama. The words that most aptly describe this enduring threat are […]

By Noah Charney. Gangsters, guns, violence, wit. Let me begin by praising Tall Tales: Now You Are, Now You’re Gone (Suplje Price: Zdej te je, a zdej te ni) for being thoroughly un-Slovene. It has action and pace, two rare attributes in the world of Slovene cinema, which too often […]

By Zhuo-Ning Su.  When No (2012) took the festival circuit by storm and eventually won a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination some years back, there were probably a handful of us who remained unconvinced or even slightly mystified. The historical drama about the ad campaign that brought down Pinochet’s military […]

By Paul Risker. From its opening breath, Nina Forever feels like a film that appeals not solely to our superficial and aesthetic gaze, but to our instincts. The opening sounds of a crash and the flashes of light that have become ingrained and associated with accidental tragedy offer a haunting presence. […]

By Zhuo-Ning Su.  Calling German writer/director Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria the runaway sensation at this year’s Berlin Film Festival is overstating it a little bit, considering how critical response to the film was not nearly as unanimously amorous as to, say, Jafar Panahi’s Taxi or Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years. That said, if […]

By Jeremy Carr. Bruno Cortona (Vittorio Gassman) zips along deserted Roman streets in his Lancia Aurelia B24. In search of a telephone, he is a high-speed automotive speck dwarfed by towering housing complexes and businesses. Bruno maintains this frenetic pace whether he’s on foot, in his car, or speaking. He […]