By Tony Williams. Though most notably associated with the Marseille Trilogy of Marius (1931), Fanny (1932), and Cesar (1936) as well as the first version of Manon of the Springs (1952), later remade in two parts by Claude Berri (1934-2009) in 1986 and 1989, Marcel Pagnol (1895-1974) also won acclaim […]
Two from Venice 2019: The Scarecrows and Corpus Christie
Ali Moosavi
September 7, 2019
By Ali Moosavi. Two films which premiered in the 2019 Venice Film Festival, both looking critically at the role of religion in modern society. The Scarecrows, written and directed by the veteran Tunisian director Nouri Bouzid is set in Tunisia in 2013. It deals with the aftermath of being freed […]
Dachra: A Different Kind of Tunisian Revolution
Greg Burris
September 3, 2019
By Greg Burris. Early on in the Tunisian horror film Dachra (Abdelhamid Bouchnak, 2018), we see a class of university students as they listen to their professor’s instructions for their final assignment. The students are to arrange themselves into groups and produce a filmed investigative report on a subject of […]
Scared Second – American Horror Project: Volume Two (Arrow Video)
September 3, 2019
By Rod Lott. One could find irony in the United States’ collective history of regional horror films being written by a Brit. Instead, I choose to thank him for it. Stephen Thrower literally wrote the book on the subject in 2007’s seminal Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation […]
Oy, Vat a Story! Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles
September 3, 2019
By Elias Savada. At moments during filmmaker Max Lewkowicz’s lovely homage to one of the world’s greatest musicals, I was verklempt. I got choked up over Chaim Topol’s interpretation of Tevye the milkman in Norman Jewison’s film version of Fiddler on the Roof, and when Lin-Manuel Miranda breaks out into […]
Dividing Lines: Tony Richardson’s The Border (Kino Lorber)
Jeremy Carr
August 28, 2019
By Jeremy Carr. Immigration enforcement agent Charlie Smith (Jack Nicholson), who moves from Los Angeles to El Paso, where he joins the Texas sector’s border patrol, says he just wants to “feel good about something sometime.” But it’s not easy in his line of work, which is marred by futility, […]
Danish Redux: After the Wedding
August 27, 2019
By Elias Savada. Sad to say, but it wasn’t a good idea for American filmmaker Bart Freundlich to remake the Oscar-nominated Best Foreign Language Feature Efter Brylluppet (After the Wedding), the 2006 film from Danish writer-director Susanne Bier. Bier, whose 2004 Danish war drama Brødre (Brothers) was also rejiggered for […]
Compelling, if Problematic: William Friedkin’s Crusing (Arrow Video)
August 25, 2019
By Gary M. Kramer. Arrow Films’ new Blu-ray edition of William Friedkin’s Cruising offers viewers the opportunity to reconsider this “controversial” thriller nearly 40 years after it was initially released. The film is fascinating, not just because of its history – the gay community disrupted the film’s shooting and objected to […]
A Subjective and Concise Triumph – The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media and the Radical Imagination by Greg Burris
August 24, 2019
A Book Review Essay by Ali Moosavi. There is an old adage that oppression and suppression fuels creativity. In the world of cinema, this is best exemplified in Palestinian Cinema. For a nation of less than five million people, it is undoubtedly the shining star in the Arab Cinema. In […]
An Invigorating Romp: Murray Pomerance’s A Dream of Hitchcock
August 24, 2019
A Book Review by John W. Fawell. The title of Murray Pomerance’s latest book on the films of Alfred Hitchcock, A Dream of Hitchcock (SUNY Press, 2018), refers to both the book’s content and its form. Pomerance means this book to be a study of the recurring motif of dreams […]