By Jonathan Monovich. Vidak/Felce’s film serves as a meaningful exploration of the role that cinema and movie theaters play in our lives.” Driving through the wooded roads of Karkkila, a small Finnish town, Emmanuelle Felce tells Veljko Vidak “I could live here. You can be in deep nature, beautiful nature. […]
Restauranteur, Dance Instructor, Hitman: Kazuo Mori’s A Certain Killer and A Killer’s Key (Arrow Video)
By Thomas M. Puhr. Light on their feet but not rushed, fun but not goofy, these films deliver just about everything you’d want from the hitman genre….” In 1967, Japanese director Kazuo Mori released back-to-back actioners starring Raizô Ichikawa as the archetypal hitman. Coldblooded, principled, calm under pressure—and often seen […]
It’s a Mad World, After All: Marco Ferreri: The Films of an Italian Provocateur
A Book Review by William Blick. In the true spirit of monomaniacal, egomaniacal, and nomadic film auteurs everywhere, Curti brings a vivaciousness to the text that immersed this reader into the brilliant and grotesquely absurdist world of Ferreri.” In film scholar Roberto Curti’s new book Marco Ferreri: The Films of […]
A Lebanese Artist Challenged: Eric McGinty’s Stockade
By Ken Hall. Ahlam’s mission acquires a Hitchcockian aspect as this law-abiding artist in the US becomes trapped in a situation which she does not understand, with mysterious people posing a threat to her safety.” This subtly presented independent mystery-drama relates the economic and emotional challenges facing Lebanese artist Ahlam […]
Eve and Her Siblings: Edward Burns’ Millers in Marriage
By Jonathan Monovich. Burns intends on making the Millers artists and is keen to understand that partnerships, like artists, do not always have the spark.” Writer/Director/Actor Edward Burns has long strived to live by Robert Bresson’s words “make visible what, without you, might perhaps never be seen.”1 His first film, […]
Sweet Dreams: Irony, Power Dynamics, and Dance in Kinds of Kindness
By M. Sellers Johnson. Through acute genre-defying sensibilities of black comedy, arbitrary of conduct, supernatural inflections, and elusive drama, the multi-narrative Kind of Kindness presents messy, yet biting tales of humanity beset by submission, conspiracy, and cults of persuasion.” Kinds of Kindness (2024) is a vigorous power play of peculiar […]
Architects of Their Own Stories – The Cinema Coven: Witches, Witchcraft and Women’s Filmmaking
A Book Review by Dávid Szőke. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas reveals the potential of contemporary filmmaking to challenge conventional cultural narratives about the witch, offering these figures greater space where they are no longer just passive objects of our anxieties but architects of their own stories.” The figure of the witch as […]
Two Early Genre Gems: The Bat (1926) and The Canary Murder Case (1929)
By Thomas Gladysz. Released by Undercrank Productions, The Bat stands as a high point in the ‘old dark house’ genre / sub-genre.” In the first decades of the 20th century, film was finding its way. Then, the various genres were being defined — and redefined, with the release of just […]
Redefining Modernist Acting and Feminist Resistance: Isabelle Huppert, Modernist Performance
A Book Review by Jenny Paola Ortega Castillo. Author Florence Jacobowitz argues that Huppert’s artistic career represents a form of cultural resistance, using her art to challenge social norms and redefine what it means to be an actress in contemporary modernist cinema.” Isabelle Huppert, Modernist Performance by Florence Jacobowitz (Wayne […]
On the Brink of Obliteration: Black Dog (Gou Zhen, 2024)
By Yun-hua Chen. A portrait of a town on the brink of obliteration and a meditation on lives rendered powerless by political and socioeconomic currents….” A man and a dog in a small northwestern town in China’s Gobi Desert—this premise might sound like a minimalist bore, but not when the […]