By Robert Kenneth Dator. Great Australian films are not so hard to come by. Finding great Australian films that Australians think are great is another matter all together. Australian film, troubled from the late 1940s when exhibitors decided to get out of the production business, spawned a robust share of […]
OffOn: An Explosion of the Senses
May 2, 2014
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “The human eye, the human form, the human face: these are the three central images of this avant-garde collage and kaleidoscope of shifting and fractured images, changing colors, and pulsing rhythms. Near the end, a tree appears briefly, and birds fly – first white, then red […]
Thoughts on Two Recent Films: Dallas Buyers Club and Catching Fire
May 1, 2014
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Matthew McConaughey is an excellent actor, and Lord knows he’s working enough these days, and he brings real fire and presence to every role he attacks. But with the exception of Steven Soderbergh’s criminally underrated Magic Mike, McConaughey’s films often don’t live up to their initial […]
Wings (1927)
April 29, 2014
By Jude Warne. On May 16th 1929, in Hollywood’s Hotel Roosevelt, it was announced that William Wellman’s film Wings had won the first “Best Picture” Academy Award, or the “Best Picture, Production” Academy Award as it was then called. Eighty-five years later, Eureka! Entertainment has re-released Wellman’s Oscar winner in […]
The Most Important Film Book of 2014: Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures
April 28, 2014
A Book Review by Wheeler Winston Dixon. Literally hundreds of film books cross my desk every year; I review books on every imaginable genre, director, movement or filmic era on an almost daily basis for a variety of publications, but every so often, a book appears that instantly commands my […]
Riot in Cell Block 11: Less Than Convincing
April 23, 2014
By Christopher Sharrett. Don Siegel has long been known as one of the “Hollywood professionals,” a group of second-string directors whose work was consistently reliable. Siegel’s films are tough and taut; some even applied the meaningless term “master of violence” before it was bestowed on Sam Peckinpah, one of Siegel’s […]
The Fictional Christopher Nolan (2013)
April 22, 2014
A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. Todd McGowan may well be the finest film theorist currently working in the States. His work is consistently original, and he writes with a concision and lucidity that renders even the most daunting of thinkers accessible. His The Real Gaze: Film Theory After Lacan (2008) […]
“A Lioness on the Prowl”: Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin
April 22, 2014
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Under The Skin (2013) is being sold on the basis of a simple premise, which is true on the face of it, but also offers just the merest suggestion of what the film is in its totality. Scarlett Johansson plays an alien inhabiting a woman’s body, […]
Rising On a Bad Wind: Hayao Miyazaki’s Sad Farewell
April 15, 2014
By Daniel Lindvall. The year is 1918 and we are somewhere on the Japanese countryside. Jiro is a young boy obsessed with airplanes. One night he dreams about flying a bird-like plane over the idyllic fields surrounding his village. Smiling peasants wave up at him. But suddenly, out of dark […]
The Lying Camera of De Palma’s Snake Eyes
April 14, 2014
By Jeremy Carr. As with much of his work, especially in the last 15 years or so, one’s response to Brian De Palma’s Snake Eyes (1999) was to a large degree established even before the film’s release. Coming off the commercial success of Mission: Impossible two years prior, this 1998 feature […]