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 […]
Coming of Age, in Detail: Third Wife
Janine Gericke
August 22, 2019
By Janine Gericke. There is a significant amount of symbolism throughout Ash Mayfair’s feature debut The Third Wife. The director and cinematographer Chananun Chotrungroj juxtapose the nuances of the lush natural settings of Vietnam with the rigid 19th-century patriarchal society surrounding the film’s female characters. The film follows 14-year-old May […]
The Truth Lies….: Cold Case Hammarskjöld
August 19, 2019
By Michael Sandlin. It’s now been eight years since Scandinavian prankster filmmaker Mads Brugger donned his pith helmet and jodhpurs in Angola to impersonate a blood diamond buyer – recording on film the whole farcical mess that ensues for his 2011 documentary feature The Ambassador. Now mad Mads is back in Africa in […]
An Old Soul Gone Too Soon: Love, Antosha
Yun-hua Chen
August 16, 2019
By Yun-hua Chen. Paying tribute to the late actor Anton Yelchin’s life, this biographical documentary extends far beyond his acting career. As Garret Price’s directorial debut premiered at the Sundance three years after the freak car accident in 2016 which took Yelchin’s life at the age of 27, the film […]
Mike Wallace is Here – and Isn’t
Christopher Sharrett
August 14, 2019
By Christopher Sharrett. The premises of the new documentary Mike Wallace is Here are contradictory, and I suppose meant ironically so. The late TV journalist, most famous for helping start the television “magazine” 60 Minutes, is portrayed as the founding father of hardball electronic journalism – and a shameless huckster who sold […]
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché – Saluting the Film Archival Community
Elias Savada
August 14, 2019
By Elias Savada. In a way, I consider myself a film archivist. I don’t do that for a living now, but I do have close ties with many such institutions, especially in the United States (the larger repositories being the Library of Congress, NYC’s Museum of Modern Art, Rochester’s George […]