By Wheeler Winston Dixon. I wish I could say kinder things about this film, especially since it’s clear that this was a labor of love on the part of its director, Upi Avianto, an Indonesian genre filmmaker with numerous other films to her credit, such as Looking For Love in […]
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
February 7, 2014
By William Repass. Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street begins with a simple equation: money is a drug. “Enough of this shit will make you invincible,” enthuses Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), as he leans in to snort a line of coke in extreme close-up, “you’ll be able to conquer the […]
Hollywood Exiles in Europe
February 3, 2014
A Book Review by Wheeler Winston Dixon. Let’s just start by saying that this is an excellent book. I get stacks of new titles every day from publishers, and it takes a lot for a book to really jump out of the pile and interest me, particularly on a topic […]
American Hustle (2013)
January 31, 2014
By Jacob Mertens. David O. Russell’s American Hustle begins with a title card stating “Some of this actually happened,” and for once a Hollywood film makes an honest claim to real events. Upon closer examination though, Russell had little choice but to say so. His film features well-developed characters, but […]
The Cinematic Palette from Feudal Japan – Gate of Hell
January 28, 2014
By Giuseppe Sedia. Beyond any artistic value or aesthetic significance, the critical response to Gate of Hell (1953) provides a rare glimpse into the evolution of cinematic taste in the Fifties. According to Jean Cocteau, who served as jury president at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival, Kinugasa’s visually flamboyant jidai-geki displayed […]
The Conformists: Creativity and Decadence in the Bulgarian Cinema 1945-89 (2011)
January 21, 2014
A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. A full historical account of Bulgaria’s cinema under Communism—given the topic’s obscurity and the lack of translated resources in the West, such a venture seems to smack of futility. To even have hopes of pulling off a project of this sort, one would have […]
Kiss the Water (2013)
January 17, 2014
By Cleaver Patterson. When someone is the subject matter of a film memoir, they must have a magical quality if they are never physically seen—either in person or in the form of archive footage—yet leave the viewer with the impression that they have met them and that their presence permeates […]
Rififi (1955)
January 15, 2014
By Jeremy Carr. The blacklist that shrouded the Hollywood community in suspicion, paranoia, and tragedy during the 1940s and ’50s, a steadily spreading outgrowth of the tactics formulated and executed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), would leave its tarnishing mark on many in the film industry: screenwriters, actors, […]
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013)
January 7, 2014
By Bill Fech. David Lowery’s quiet western drama Ain’t Them Bodies Saints came and went from theaters like a passing tumbleweed. The film grossed fewer than $400,000 domestically and fared little better overseas. Perhaps audiences expected an old-fashioned shoot ‘em up from what, at its core, is a love story […]
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
January 3, 2014
By Jacob Mertens. “The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge […]