Review

By Robert Kenneth Dator. Rebel Without a Cause (1955); East of Eden (1956); Giant (1956); three films, and only three, classics all and the stuff of legend, starring the only actor to truly give a young Marlon Brando a run for his money: James Dean. The only thing more difficult to […]

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “‘We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union . . .’ When our original Founding Fathers first set these words to paper, they strove to ‘establish Justice’, ‘insure domestic Tranquility’ and ‘promote the general Welfare.’ Today, the world is a much different place, […]

By Cleaver Patterson. Superman has been reborn, and from hereon shall be known as the Man of Steel – at least he will if Warner Bros. Pictures’ new CGI heavy extravaganza is to be believed. Forget anything you think you know about Clark Kent and his alien alter-ego, as this […]

By Mark James.  Here’s a problem: people are things as well as they are people. Not as much as people are people, clearly, but people’s sensual bodies as well as their social being exist in precisely the same plane of things-in-the-world, as junk at a flea market or artifacts in […]

By Mark James.  The documentary Chimeras is a contemplative, respectful attempt to look at Chinese modernity through the lens of its art. The film ends with a tripartite definition of the title. A chimera is a mythological beast made of different animal parts; a wild, unrealistic dream or fantasy; and […]

By Matthew Sorrento. Just like the cinema, the magic show is rooted in the nature of looking. After all, the illusionist’s art is to trick the eye into seeing something different, or redirecting the eye’s attention. The earliest cinematic prototypes, like the zoetrope and the kineograph, produce optical illusions but […]

By Robert Kenneth Dator. Bury The Hatchet? Where is the conflict? The title of this beautifully shot documentary would constitute something of a double entendre if one could find the combatants. There is poetic strife of a sort; factionalism of a sort; mild hostility; competition, but no long-standing feud; no […]

By Jacob Mertens.  Cinema can be seen as an act of illusion. Scenes that filmed separately become a cohesive whole, real footage blends seamlessly with CG, and a story moves at the behest of a surreptitious screenwriter. Naturally, Louis Leterrier’s Now You See Me finds an appropriate medium for its […]

By Cleaver Patterson. Director Brian De Palma’s classic 1981 conspiracy thriller Blow Out is not just a marvellously realised exercise in rising paranoia, but also a stylishly twisted example of one of Hollywood’s masters of suspense at the height of his powers. John Travolta stars as Jack Terry, a technician […]

By Moira Sullivan.  In an unprecedented decision, the jury for the official competition of the 66th Festival de Cannes, led by President Steven Spielberg, awarded the French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche and French actresses Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos the Palme d’Or for La Vie d’Adèle – Chapitre 1 & 2 (Blue is the […]