Karen Morley, with Osgood Perkins and Paul Muni, in Scarface (1932) A Book Review by Tony Williams. This 2019 book from BearManor Media is a well-compiled series of career surveys and interviews of several screen personalities, some of whom may be familiar to the general viewer, others who have been […]
“My Name is Edna”: Fragmentation, Space and Identity in Relic (Natalie Erika James, 2020)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Creswick is a small town of around 3000 people just outside Ballarat, a regional area in the Australian southern state of Victoria. Japanese-Australian filmmaker Natalie Erika James has solid professional form working in this part of the country; almost a decade ago she posted on Facebook about […]
Aorta Be in Pictures: The Filmmaking Mystery of Gregory Hatanaka and His Latest, Heartbeat
By Rod Lott. If you have run across Gregory Hatanaka’s name, it most likely was affixed to Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance, his well-intentioned, but ill-advised sequel to the legendarily bad 1991 movie he didn’t make. If it’s true you can’t make a cult movie on purpose, that 2015 disappointment […]
Prima Donna, Front and Center: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Truth
By Elias Savada. Catherine Deneuve, the graceful doyenne of French cinema, continues to amaze at 76. In Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new French film, La Vérité (The Truth) – his first in a non-native language – he has created Fabienne Dangeville as the self-centered star. It’s a Frankensteinian role that […]
Homewrecker Leaves You Speechless
“Sisterhood has not been this menacingly funny since Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?“ By Elias Savada. There’s a devilish wink running through this (mostly) housebound tale of two generations setting off against one another. In one corner is Linda (Precious Chong, daughter of Tommy, who also helped finance the film […]
Learning to Tell a Story: Scorsese Shorts (Criterion Collection)
By John Duncan Talbird. In 1974, soon after the splash of Mean Streets (1973), his first major directorial success, Martin Scorsese made a documentary about his parents, Italianamerican. Aside from still photos of the family and archival footage of Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood during the early 20th century, the film […]
On the Queen and Her People – Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things
By Ali Moosavi. She has been called The First Lady of Song and Queen of Jazz, titles which Ella Fitzgerald truly earned. In the documentary, Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things (2019), veteran British documentary filmmaker Leslie Woodhead charts Ella’s life from becoming a teenage orphan, running away from […]
The Comic Don’ts of Spying (and Filmmaking): My Spy
By Elias Savada. I wasn’t sure what to expect before watching My Spy, an action family comedy now streaming online. Mix a tough looking guy (Dave Bautista) with a cute, ornery 9-year-old (Chloe Coleman) with a small dose of cartoon characters. Alas, Wile E. Coyote would not approve of this […]
Stay Angry: Jon Stewart’s Irresistible
By Elias Savada. Entertainer Jon Stewart has been pissed off at a lot of things, but I suspect nothing riles him more than two words: Citizens United. During his years hosting The Daily Show he would rant and rave (and, out of necessity, joke) with innumerable guests about the influence […]
Rocking (and Tripping) in the Desert: Stuart Swezey’s Desolation Center
By Thomas Puhr. Los Angeles probably isn’t the first city that comes to mind when one thinks of American punk rock, but Stuart Swezey’s Desolation Center (2018) successfully shines a light on one of the genre’s lesser-known cultural hubs. The titular organization, founded by Swezey himself, held a series of […]