Review

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

By Andrew J. Douglas.  Anticipating an early effort by a respected filmmaker—let alone one known for work that is at once thoughtful, entertaining, acclaimed, and popular like Christopher Nolan—can be conflicting. There is the tantalizing allure of raw, unbridled talent on display, accompanied by the reticence ignited by the possibility […]

By Matthew Sorrento. The choice of writer-director JC Chandor to cast Robert Redford in All is Lost was astute, if not fortunate. By offering Redford the sole role in this survivalist-at-sea pic – essentially, a leaner Cast Away (2000; with no landing) for the 77-year-old performer, and a chance to […]

By Axel Andersson. At first it looks like an ornate latticework, but there is no way to separate the scars from the man. Most of us are familiar with the image, although few know the name of the most iconic whipped black man whose tortured skin has been reproduced so […]

By Danny King.  For his first two stabs at directing, Ralph Fiennes has selected subject matter that seems typical of an actor-turned-director almost to the point of parody. His 2011 debut, Coriolanus, took an oft-disregarded but palpably intense Shakespeare text as its starting point, and the resulting film is jam-packed […]