Welcome To The Majority (2012)

By Leo Collis. After working in film and television for nearly a decade, Russell Owen steps up to present his debut full-length production, Welcome to the Majority. The film is centred on a post-apocalyptic purgatory, where nine people are forced to face their demons to find a way out. Split […]

The Deep Blue Sea: Terence Davies and the Woman’s Melodrama

By Christopher Sharrett. The woman’s melodrama has fallen on hard times, as is the case with any genre that takes its material seriously in the age of the Hollywood blockbuster. The continuing plight of women under the oppression of patriarchy simply isn’t much of a topic of interest in the […]

Silent House (2011)

By Steven Harrison Gibbs. For nearly a decade, the horror genre seems to have been stuck in an immense black hole, from which has seeped a rank plague of remakes – be they of American classics or foreign sensations. On rare occasion, there might be a faint whiff of creativity […]

Indie Game: The Movie (2011): A SXSW Review

By Jacob Mertens. For those of us passionately invested in the burgeoning art form of video games, the parallels between both game and film industries remain undeniable. Games and film have a similar visual/auditory construction, they both rely on intense collaboration, and they exhibit near identical patterns in marketing and […]

The Avengers (2012): The Mega-Blockbuster Hit of the Year!

By William Frasca. It’s no surprise that Marvel’s Avengers would be a success, but after its opening weekend in the US taking in over $200 million, and shattering the top box office record of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the new question is what can these superhero […]

Keyhole (2011): A SXSW Review

By Jacob Mertens. The muted wail of sirens fills the air and a languid spotlight scrolls over the wall, penetrating the tattered guts of a rundown Victorian house. Men lie on the floor dead or dying, blood pooling over the floor boards as other men pace over their prostrated bodies. […]

The Raid: Redemption (2011): A SXSW Review

By Jacob Mertens. A SWAT team skulks up a staircase in a rundown tenement, shrouded in the unnatural glow of dim fluorescents. Their movements are precise and silent, and they strain their ears for the faintest sound. Loud speakers are attached to the stairwell and the hallways, begging for a […]

Abel Gance’s Magnificent Napoléon

By Janine Gericke. On March 24, 25, 31 and April 1, 2012, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival proudly presented Abel Gance’s five and a half hour epic Napoléon at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre presented by film historian and preservationist Kevin Brownlow, along with the British Film Institute, American Zoetrope, the Film Preserve, and Photoplay Productions. Brownlow’s love of this film began in the 1950s, when […]

Le Havre

By Celluloid Liberation Front. Outside the gentrified humanism for ‘members only’ and the gated communities of meritocracy, in the suburbs of a neglected humanity is Le Havre, the latest film by Aki Kaurismäki. When European stars could not fly yet they would sail to Hollywood from the port of Le […]