By Thomas Puhr. It’s only fitting that writer-director Tim Sutton’s latest, Donnybrook (2018), opens with a voyage by boat. Like Odysseus, Jarhead Earl (Jamie Bell) undergoes a long journey that culminates in a bloody showdown. Waiting for him at the end of the river is the titular underground fight, which […]
Handicapping the Oscars: 2019 Oscar Nominated Shorts
February 14, 2019
By Elias Savada. Another year and another Academy Awards show looms large, filled with commentary about snubs and surprises and a program, the first in decades, without a host. While many of us wonder which film will take home the statuette (my personal favorite remains Green Book, but Roma seems to […]
“Lillie Plays Violet”: Exit Smiling (A San Francisco Silent Film Festival Review)
Janine Gericke
February 11, 2019
By Janine Gericke. On Saturday, December 1st, the SF Silent Film Festival held its annual Day of Silents winter program at the famed Castro Theatre. As I’ve previously covered, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival offers a year round celebration of early film. The festival pulls in thousands of silent […]
They Shall Not Grow Old – But All Shall Perish
Christopher Sharrett
February 10, 2019
By Christopher Sharrett. I don’t feel especially generous toward Peter Jackson’s “new” (hardly the right word) film, and must call it stunt filmmaking. With the help of the BBC and the Imperial War Museum, Jackson and his large team of collaborators mark the centenary of World War I by assembling […]
The Impatient Actor – Gene Hackman, The Life and Work by Peter Shelley
February 10, 2019
A Book Review by Louis J. Wasser. It’s entirely possible you’ll come away from Peter Shelley’s biography of Gene Hackman knowing less about the actor than you thought you knew. Hackman is at once a perfectionist, cruel, gracious, ungrateful, humorless, a comedian, helpful to his fellow actors, and difficult to […]
Beyond Quatermass – Brian Donlevy, the Good Bad Guy: A Bio-Filmography by Derek Sculthorpe
February 7, 2019
A Book Review by Tony Williams. It is early evening watching on UK’s ITV channel, the only one of two that existed in those pre-cable days in an era resembling former Prime Minister John Major’s definition of an England comprising village greens, little old ladies sipping tea, and warm beer! […]
Real-Life Whac-a-Mole: Rodents of Usual Size
February 5, 2019
By Elias Savada. First, I thought this might be another horror film with oversized critters due to 1) atomic radiation run amuck, 2) global waming (as Mr. Trump likes to call it), or 3) some crazed offspring of Minnie Mouse and Bucky the Beaver. The correct answer is 4) none of […]
Redemption: Red Kimona (A San Francisco Silent Film Festival Review)
Janine Gericke
February 4, 2019
By Janine Gericke. During the silent film era, some of the most prolific and highest earning producers, writers, and filmmakers were women. Many of these films involved stories about issues such as prostitution, birth control, and abortion. Issues that continue to cause controversy today. Dorothy Davenport created a trilogy of […]
Fifty Shades of Deep Red: Piercing
Jeremy Carr
January 31, 2019
By Jeremy Carr. “You have to relax.” These words of advice come from Laia Costa’s Mona, near the beginning of Piercing, the second film from writer-director Nicholas Pesce. She is talking to her husband, Reed (Christopher Abbott), a man with a permanently perturbed disposition who will later echo the suggestion […]
An Abdurdist, Black Comedy Mixer: Pig
Ali Moosavi
January 31, 2019
By Ali Moosavi. To fans of Asghar Farhadi, Mani Haghighi may be known for co-writing the script of Fireworks Wednesday (Chaharshanbeh Soori) and acting in About Elly (Darbareye Elly). He is, however, a prominent writer-director in his own right. His style, as seen in his recent films Modest Reception (Paziraieh […]