By Cleaver Patterson. American-made animated films appear to have a fascination with middle European cities and architecture. Take The Boxtrolls for instance: the latest work from Laika Entertainment—the production company behind recent hits Coraline (2009) and Paranorman (2012)—has a predominance of gabled rooftops and twisting cobbled streets, which not only lends the […]
La Sirga (2013)
September 3, 2014
By James Teitelbaum. The armed conflict in Columbia has now been claiming lives for fifty years. The Columbian government has been battling several paramilitary organizations plus a handful of further guerrilla groups over everything from land reform to cocaine production. With those same guerrilla groups allegedly working for mafia drug […]
A House of Nightmares: Douglas Sirk’s Sleep, My Love
August 28, 2014
By Jeremy Carr. Sleep, My Love begins with a nightmarish state of panic as Alison Courtland (Claudette Colbert) wakes to find herself inexplicably on a Boston-bound train. She doesn’t remember boarding the train. In fact, the last thing she recalls is going to sleep in her New York City home. […]
Sleepwalker (1984)
August 25, 2014
By Janine Gericke. Saxon Logan’s 1984 film Sleepwalker was once thought to be lost. Distributors weren’t sure how to market and sell the film; so instead, it ended up on a shelf for nearly 30 years. Finally, BFI Flipside have not only restored the film for a DVD/Blu-ray release, but […]
Love is Strange (2014)
August 20, 2014
By Mark James. Love is strange, and so is the real estate market these days, especially in New York. Love’s form can change along with the place and the people that house it. And so Love is Strange—director Ira Sachs’ and screenwriter Mauricio Zacharias’s second installment in a New York […]
Consumed: David Cronenberg’s Foray into Body Horror Prose
August 18, 2014
A Book Review by Shane Joaquin Jimenez. The Nest (2014), the latest film by David Cronenberg, is comprised of a single unbroken GoPro shot. A topless woman sits on an examination table in a dungeon-like basement, pleading for a mastectomy. Her left breast, she says, is filled with a swarm […]
The Varieties of Experience: Michel Gondry’s Mood Indigo
August 16, 2014
By Paul Risker. In my review of Alive Inside for Film International, the idea arose that the act of explaining one’s love of a piece of music undermines the intimate bond formed between person and art. Now whilst discussion may not undermine any intimate bond formed in this case between […]
A Most Wanted Man: The Zen of Spydom
August 13, 2014
By Jacob Mertens. At some point in watching modern spy films—be they centered around James Bond, Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan, et al.—viewers can lose sight of the fact that being a spy is a job. As with any job, moments of exhilaration are matched with moments of mundanity, and a […]
I am Cuba at 50
August 11, 2014
By James Knight. “My sugar was carried away on ships, but my tears were left behind.” This year marks the fiftieth birthday of Mikhail Kalatozov’s classic film I am Cuba. Not in the half decade since has a film been so effective in its portrayal of history. It is a […]
Making Personas: Transnational Film Stardom in Modern Japan (2013)
August 6, 2014
A Book Review by Carmen Siu. Earlier this year, Avril Lavigne garnered considerable negative attention for her ‘Hello Kitty’ music video. Filmed in Tokyo, the video features an enthusiastic Lavigne jumping around in stereotypical Japanese locales, like a clothing boutique, a candy store and a sushi bar, backed by four expressionless […]