Review

By Elias Savada. I know a lot of people who would love The Pickle Recipe, a low budget feature (made lower by Michigan’s now-defunct location incentive program), about a grandmother’s treasured secret cucumber process and the family members trying to claw it away from her. “A metaphor for life,” according […]

By John Duncan Talbird. Soupy Sales, on his legendary children’s show in the 1950s, encouraged his audience to write letters to him, but in twenty-five words or less. One member of the television viewing audience, James Osterberg, Jr., was a devoted fan and he saw that word count as liberating not […]

By Tony Williams. Cat People has long enjoyed a high reputation amongst discriminating members of the critical fraternity for its deserved status as well as its close links to film noir. Did it not emerge from the studio that produced Citizen Kane (1941), a film which, if not the first […]

By Brandon Konecny.  After scamming some passersby for lunch money, Marian and Petro sit in a tiny restaurant in the Republic of Moldova, Europe’s poorest country. Petro devours the food arrayed on their table while Marian sits with his eyes fixed on the floor. Marian interrupts Petro’s unremitting chewing when […]

By Christopher Sharrett. Crewdson’s photos remind us how photography preceded cinema with its peculiar psychological impulses, provoking viewers to want more insight into being as images ‘redeemed physical reality.’” I write this short piece on photographer Gregory Crewdson for a film/television journal with the simple rationale that Crewdson’s photographs, as […]

By Elias Savada. The directorial debut for Lee Wilkof – a long-time character actor in all forms of media and on many a stage – No Pay, Nudity is one for the art house crowd. Yet, even “art house” folks may have issues with the bland story line (by actor-turned-feature-debut screenwriter Ethan […]

By Mark James.  Most of us probably remember John Berger as the host of Ways of Seeing, a four-part 1972 television series that he created for BBC where Berger educated the nation about looking at art, effectively demonstrating that one can discuss the so called ‘Old Masters’ in ways that […]

By Elias Savada. I had nearly forgotten about that nuclear blip a third of a century ago, the one which is the core of Robert Kenner’s new feature Command and Control. It was a missile crisis that nearly wiped out Arkansas and a nice chunk of the United States. So, are […]

By Gary M. Kramer. The title character of A Man Called Ove would probably not see the heartwarming Swedish film, A Man Called Ove, adapted from Fredrik Backman’s national bestseller (2012, English translation in 2013). He is far too cynical, and would call this gentle comedy-drama “mush nonsense.” Still, this […]