Review

By Christopher Weedman. Released by Strand Releasing and narrated by actor Keanu Reeves, director Steven Okazaki’s new feature-length documentary Mifune: The Last Samurai (2016) is a well-intentioned yet underdeveloped tribute to the larger-than-life actor Toshiro Mifune. As the documentary boldly proclaims, Mifune possessed an unbridled energy and commanding screen presence […]

By Christopher Sharrett. The Criterion Collection’s release on Blu-ray of Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls might bring accusations of slumming. Such accusations won’t come from me. I have long seen Meyer as one of the great American satirists of low-rent cinema, able to rip the nation and […]

By Jude Warne. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” –Idiom of recording artist indicating the producer What defines a quality music producer? Well-informed and developed artistic taste? Phenomenal technical prowess in the recording studio? Is it someone who stands off to the side of the musicians, supporting and […]

A Book Review by Tony Williams. Berghahn is known for its publication of excellent books on German Cinema within its catalog. This recent work proves no exception to the rule. Including fifteen essays by well-known scholars in the field aware of the changing complexities of subject matter and well-versed in […]

by Kate Hearst. A renaissance of teen films about sexuality has energized French cinema in recent years with works by Abdellatif Kechiche, Céline Sciamma, and Katell Quillevere, among others. Now, in Being 17, veteran filmmaker André Téchiné brings his unique sensibility to examine the complex inter-play of sexual awakening and […]

By Elias Savada. In Hollywood, when you hear the words “alien invasion,” you might expect any manner of shoot-’em-up movies like Independence Day (1996) or Edge of Tomorrow (2014), among many other rousing popcorn-munching action pictures that have landed in our planet’s multiplexes. Arrival is a bit different. It is a wildly satisfying “alien […]

By Jessica Baxter. You could never accuse writer/director Anna Biller of masking her influences. She has, to date, painstakingly created two films that would fit seamlessly within the sexploitation genre of the 60s and 70s. She follows up her sexual revolution comedy debut, Viva (2007), with The Love Witch, a […]

By John Duncan Talbird. We open Don’t Call Me Son on Pierre (astonishing newcomer Naomi Nero), pleasantly drunk or high, beautiful and mascaraed with long, wild hair, loping through a party, teens dancing by themselves or in pairs to electronic music. The handheld camera follows him and we see that […]

By William Repass.  In Kieślowski’s 1981[1] metaphysical/political triptych, Blind Chance, the subtlest of details cut across three alternate storylines to triangulate a Poland on the verge of Solidarity. Take, for example, which drink the protagonist Witek (Bogusław Linda) favors in each divergence following the train station scene—a hinge, as it […]