By Jonathan Monovich. Fallen Leaves implies that cinema, and the love that it fosters, saves lives.” In Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly (1961), it is said that when the thought of love and God being the same is made “suddenly the emptiness turns into abundance, and despair into life. […]
Florid in a Good Way: Herbert Brenon’s The Spanish Dancer (1923)
By Thomas Gladysz. With a range of pictures to his credit – fantasies, adventure films, melodramas, historical epics – there are those who feel Brenon was a director without a defined, or at least a dynamic, style. There is truth to that assertion…. Adaptability, however, shouldn’t detract from an appreciation […]
A Queer Artist Hiding in Plain Sight – Counter Gravity: The Films of Heinz Emigholz
A Book Review by Rastko Novakovic. A fascinating record of the depth of Heinz Emigholz’s cinematic engagement and the evolving critical reception of it.” Heinz Emigholz started in the structuralist vein with the Shenec-Tady trilogy (1972-75): intricate, silent, mathematically composed studies of landscape. Those who know these films will be […]
The Essential is (In)visible to the Eye: The Human Figure on Film
A Book Review by Dávid Szőke. Author Seth Barry Watter discusses four interlocking, yet separate modes of looking: the natural, the pictorial, the institutional, and the fictional. Each comprises a specific way of seeing, explains the author, whereby we select and assign different concepts to our constructions of knowledge, meaning, […]
Never Change: Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla (2023)
By Thomas M. Puhr. A portrait of how the celebrity machine thrives on packaging and preserving its subjects as doll-like children who are denied the luxury of developing discernible inner selves.” The opening chords from Alice Coltrane’s “Going Home” accompany an overhead shot of two pristinely pedicured feet creeping along […]
Unearthing the “Story” of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation: Landsberry-Baker and Peeler’s Bad Press
By Jenny Paola Ortega Castillo. If people are not liking you, then you’re doing your job.“ -Angel Ellis Freedom of the press is a fundamental right guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution; it has been a cornerstone of American democracy since its ratification in 1791. Nonetheless, […]
The Holdovers: Alexander Payne Rises Again
By Elias Savada. A big, gift-wrapped present filled with sentimentality and lovely, effective performances….” Always a visionary, and one whose seven previous features as a director have garnered considerable acclaim—the sole, gaping-wound exception being 2017’s Downsizing, a disastrous journey into sci-fi dramedy with Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig—director-producer-writer Alexander Payne […]
Action by the Numbers: King of Killers (2023)
By Jeremy Carr. At just 88 minutes, King of Killers moves along at a well enough pace, but when there are lulls in the film it can be as lifeless as so many corpses strewn across the floor.” There’s something to be said for the escapist allure of a big, […]
Falling in Love with Myself: Signe Baume’s My Love Affair with Marriage (2022)
By Jenny Paola Ortega Castillo. The film uses animation to delve deep into the complex tapestry of women’s roles in marriage and the harrowing loss of identity that often accompanies this timeless practice.” I felt like an inflated balloon trying to fit into a shoe box that couldn’t accommodate its […]
Take Your Medicine: Baatar Batsukh’s Aberrance (2022)
By Thomas M. Puhr. Unfortunately, this historical importance, as “the first Mongolian horror feature to be released theatrically in the U.S., is attached to a messy – albeit occasionally inspired – thriller that collapses under one (or two, or three) too many outlandish twists.” Baatar Batsukh’s Aberrance (2022) arrives with […]