By William Blick. A visceral metaphor for grief in an impressive low-budget indie debut…..” Mary Dauterman’s first feature length film, Booger, comes across as a cinematic exercise of sorts, i.e., a visceral metaphor for grief in an impressive low-budget indie debut. Not quite gory or suspenseful enough to satisfy the hardcore/ […]
When a Hero Exploits: Sana Na N’Hada’s Nome (2023)
By Yun-hua Chen. A profoundly enlightening film from Angola that delves into the essence of independence, the sacrifices it demands, and the transformative power of cinema.” Selected for the “Rizome” program at IndieLisboa, a section that highlights relevant current issues, Nome, an Angolan film directed by Sana Na N’Hada, is […]
Red Rooms: The Strategic Antipathy and Empathy of Emotional Contagions
By David Ryan. Writer-director Pascal Plante connects the complicated mechanisms of justice, social contagions, and psychological complexity to explore two dominant themes: the film contrasts the courtroom’s brightly lit (and tightly-controlled) semiotics with the digital world’s illicit market economy.” Red Rooms or Les Chambres Rouges (2023) focuses on the questionable […]
Rediscovering a Hollywood Luminary: Francis Ford & The Craving
By Jeremy Carr. Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions has once again sifted through the annals of film’s rich origins and, with producer and Ford scholar Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, worked to digitally restore and release a key Francis Ford feature as well as a grouping of shorts….” Before he was known simply as […]
“When Did the British Ever Appreciate Their Great Men?” – Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
By Jonathan Monovich. The way film history should be taught, recognizing greatness and encouraging students to be excited about classic films of the past.” David Hinton’s Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (2024) is and should go down as one of the great documentaries about film history. […]
Yin and Yang: Stephen Soucy’s Merchant Ivory
By Jonathan Monovich. Chronicling both the hits and lesser known entries in the Merchant/Ivory catalogue, Soucy’s film thrives due to its expansive presence of recurring cast and crew collaborators.” The glam/art rock icon, Bryan Ferry, famously said “other bands wanted to wreck hotel rooms; Roxy Music wanted to redecorate them.”1 […]
Carla and Gottlieb: Between the Temples
By Jonathan Monovich. Encourages laughter at the absurdity of life while simultaneously empathizing with life’s difficulties that engulf its eclectic characters.” You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can certainly be drawn by it. The same goes for a film’s poster. As an owner of the Minnie […]
The American Friend: Claude Schmitz’s The Other Laurens (2023)
By Thomas M. Puhr, You’re best off surrendering to its mad logic.” Like some of the neo-noirs that inspired it, Claude Schmitz’s The Other Laurens (L’autre Laurens, 2023) boasts a dizzyingly convoluted plot. I look at my frantically scribbled notes on the film, and despair washes over me. I take […]
Take Me Far from Your Leader: Zach Clark’s The Becomers
By Thomas M. Puhr. Far from great satire, but further proof that Clark is willing to take big swings, budget and taste be damned.” While watching Zach Clark’s The Becomers (2023), I was reminded more than once of a web comic that was making the rounds on social media earlier […]
“Who the Hell is That Dick Watson?”: Ricardo Darín and the Construction of Latin American Film Stardom
A Book Review by Dávid Szőke. Both a compelling analysis of how political influences shaped the notion of the ‘movie star’ and an impressive biography of a cultural icon….” Argentine’s cinematic evolution is inextricably linked to the 20th-century tumultuous political landscape in the country. This process has been marked by […]