Review

By Luke Aspell.  Taken as lost, City Girl dramatizes its own predicament in reverse. Our Daily Bread, the story of wheat from which this 1930 Fox release was re-cut, would have hymned the cyclical sense of Tustine’s (David Torrence) life of toil. In the light of that perspective, it is […]

By Matthew Sorrento. You’d think that Woody Allen would have exorcized it already, after all the complicated romances he’s filmed, of equal parts truth and bitterness. After moving from his early works of farce and confirming his range with tragic romantic comedies in the late 1970s, he let flow a […]

By Matthew Sorrento. The early American studios acquired literary properties for prestige productions, regardless of what genre grew as a result. The style of classical horror, which emerged in the early 1930s at Universal Studios, appeared largely by accident. By adapting Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the studio […]

By Cleaver Patterson. ‘Masterpiece’ is a word used all to freely in the world of cinema, frequently to describe films which are less than deserving of such praise. So, when one emerges that truly warrants this epithet, like Brian De Palma’s erotic crime classic Dressed to Kill, the power of […]

Book Review by Brandon Konecny. Since academia’s interest in cinema as an art form, philosophers have frequently proven to be some of the most insightful voices on the subject. Alain Badiou’s Cinema, accordingly, offers such an instance. For the first time in an English translation, the French philosopher’s over 50 […]

By Jacob Mertens.  I cannot write a review for Fruitvale Station without having the recent verdict of the George Zimmerman trial dig at my sides, seeking some corresponding resonance. The risk here is that I let Ryan Coogler’s film become something more than it ought to be: a simple portrait […]

By Kimberly Behzadi. Upside Down follows the love story of two young people pulled apart by opposing forces. After a floundering theatrical release in early March this year, the film, written and directed by Juan Diego Solanas, has found a small following on the digital platform and is available on […]

By Celluloid Liberation Front.  “No hungry man who is also sober can be persuaded to use his last dollar for anything but food. But a well-fed, well-clad, well-sheltered and otherwise well-tended person can be persuaded as between an electric razor and an electric toothbrush. Along with prices and costs, consumer […]

By Jacob Mertens. “It was to be the fate of this patient little girl to see much more than, at first, she understood, but also, even at first, to understand much more than any little girl, however patient, had perhaps ever understood before. Only a drummer-boy in a ballad or […]

By Cleaver Patterson. Comic-book characters must be a Hollywood dream. A film featuring one, if a hit, is a potential goldmine—with the possibility of limitless prequels, sequels, spinoffs and merchandising opportunities, it is a virtual license to print money. Even if a film is not a success, all the studio […]