Review

Book Review by Brandon Konecny.  Historically, the skillful manipulation of light and shadow has contributed to the distinctiveness of a number of canonical cinemas. From Weimar “street films” to the golden age of horror in the 30s, German Expressionism to detective noirs, lighting has provided filmmakers various ways with which […]

By Janine Gericke. Conspirators is the third film in Oxide Pang’s Detective trilogy, beginning with The Detective (2007) and The Detective 2 (2011). All three films star Aaron Kwok as detective Chan Tam. Pang should be somewhat familiar to American audiences, having given us a remake of his own film […]

By Christopher Sharrett. The advertisements for this film by Alexandre Moors contain the blurb “based on the true story of the DC snipers.” One would think that the claim of “true story” would have run its course (at least for those seriously interested in the medium) in film advertising decades […]

By Janine Gericke. I was surprised to learn that A Complicated Story was made as a student film by first-time filmmaker Kiwi Chow, with executive production through the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts’ film production program and the legends Johnnie To and Bill Kong. Not a bad way to kick […]

By William Repass. “I know that I look like Hitler, and I’m gonna prove it right now!” Since any discussion of German-American director Ernst Lubitsch must devolve, sooner or later, into a feeble attempt at pinning down the so-called “Lubitsch Touch,” let us resign ourselves the inevitable, and see if […]

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. I’m always in a bad mood after I see a bad movie, especially when I have hopes that the film will be an altogether different experience. Such was the case today with Gravity (2013), the latest feature from director Alfonso Cuarón, which has been playing to […]

A Book Review by Budd Wilkins.  ‘In his essay on “Screen Memories,” [Freud] argued that troubling or traumatic memories tend to find expression through highly distorted symbolic forms’ (3). This one line perfectly encapsulates the core idea explored throughout European Civil War Films. A nation suffers a kind of trauma […]

By Mark James. You can tell that Yann Gonzalez’s film, You and the Night (Rencontres d’après minuit, better translated as Encounters after Midnight) is a fantasy because of its central set-up: an orgy in which the participants reveal their emotional pasts. The cinematic possibilities of strangers meeting up for sex […]

By Jacob Mertens. Moral relativism can make for a lousy film. Characters bark and growl about their actions being justified, the narrative halts to brood, the nature of God and sin are clumsily introduced, all for an elusive truth that might as well be out of the filmmakers’ reach. To […]

Book Review by Jez Owen.  This collection from academic imprint Anthem Press collates material written by the eminent University of Boulder resident lecturer, critic and theorist Bruce F. Kawin. Written between 1977 and 2001, the work included covers a cross-section of film specific topics; from those defining a film’s particular […]