By Cleaver Patterson. Watching the work of German animator Lotte Reiniger, one thing is clear above all else: the magical shadow plays, which were her favorite medium, are perfectly suited to a world of fantasy and make-believe, as seen in her masterpiece The Adventures of Prince Achmed, newly released by […]
The Kid with a Bike (2011)
September 19, 2013
By Luke Buckle. The Dardenne brothers return with another realist-documentary style film, this time depicting eleven year old protagonist Cyril (Thomas Doret) and the disruption to his life after his father (Jérémie Renier) abandoned him, leaving him at a foster home in Seraing. Winning the Grand Prix at the 2011 […]
The Ballad of Narayama (1958)
September 17, 2013
By John A. Riley. Keisuke Kinoshita’s colorful elegy The Ballad of Narayama deals with ubasute, the apparently apocryphal Japanese practice of abandoning elderly relatives to the elements, and about which many legends exist. In a village in the Shinano mountains, where food is scarce, we are introduced to Orin, an […]
Mahi Va Gorbeh: A Venice Film Festival Review
September 14, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. The award at the 70th Venice Film Festival called the “Special Orizzonti Award for Innovative Content” went to Shahram Mokri’s Mahi Va Gorbeh (Fish and Cat). The Orrizzonti (Horizons) category features work that takes cinema into new directions. This is well exemplified by acclaimed Iranian writer-director’s amazing […]
Eastern Boys: A Venice Film Festival Review
September 12, 2013
By Moira Sullivan. Eastern Boys, directed by Robin Campillo, won best film in the 70th Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti section. The film offers a complex and provocative narrative about a young gang of East European undocumented immigrants who plunder a middle-aged man (Olivier Rabourdin) after he tries to pick up one of […]
A Teacher
September 10, 2013
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Hannah Fidell’s debut feature A Teacher has been getting something of a critical drubbing in the media since it opened on Friday September 6 in Manhattan; and yet it seems to me that the movie is remarkably successful in a small, quiet way. I also notice […]
Repo Man (1984)
September 10, 2013
By Brandon Konecny. As a child of the nineties, I narrowly evaded much of the cultural sterility of the preceding decade. Sure, we had the unfortunate instances of the “Macarena” and Yugoslav Wars (as well as the profound ineffectiveness of the industrial world to respond appropriately); but after watching Alex […]
Nosferatu (1922)
September 6, 2013
By Cleaver Patterson. Some films have, since their first release, entered into the realms of mythical cinema. Whether due to their technical achievements, performances or simply by dint of that inexplicable quality that makes the film viewing experience magical, these movies have outlived their contemporaries to become the stuff of […]
The Symbolic, the Sublime, and Slavoj Žižek’s Theory of Film (2012)
September 4, 2013
A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. Slavoj Žižek is by far one of the most prominent intellectuals active today, gaining much of his popularity from his frequent engagement with popular culture, expansive bibliography, and endlessly entertaining lectures. To the chagrin of figures like David Bordwell, the Slovenian philosopher—perhaps the small […]
The World’s End (2013)
September 3, 2013
By Jacob Mertens. In film, there are any number of ways the world can end: zombies wreak havoc across the globe, colossal monsters terrorize earth from an inter-dimensional riff in our ocean’s depths, the biblical apocalypse forces mid-grade celebrities to bunker down in James Franco’s house and whine incessantly about […]