Review

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 […]

A book review by Liza Palmer. In 2004, I had the pleasure of reviewing the first edition of Tony Lee Moral’s Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie for Scope. When I was approached to review the revised edition, I did not hesitate, recalling the first version to be a strong, […]

By Cleaver Patterson. A book like J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit was always going to be too big in size and scope to be contained, should it ever be made, by just one film. Whether this justifies stretching it over three, as New Zealand director Peter Jackson has done, […]