A Book Review by Irv Slifkin. Phil Hall did a great service to film fans seeking the forgotten and obscure with his regular column “The Bootleg Files” that ran for years on the FilmThreat.com (regrettably defunct). A film programmer, publicist in indie film, author of six previous books and prolific writer, Hall […]
The Voice of a Frenetic, Heated Cinema – E̒ric Rohmer: A Biography by Antoine de Baecque and Noël Herpe
August 23, 2016
A Book Review by James Knight. E̒ric Rohmer’s irrefutable place in the cathedral of film auteurs has been long since reserved. With films such as My Night with Maud in 1969, and Claire’s Knee in 1970, being among others, examples of the Rohmerian cinema that found poetry and philosophy in the […]
The French Spirited Away to New York: Phantom Boy
August 19, 2016
By Jessica Baxter. Co-directors Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol follow up their Oscar nominated film, A Cat in Paris, with Phantom Boy, a film that is perplexingly set in New York City, though everything else about it is as French as can be including the humor and animation style. The script […]
A Film of its Time: Spies, Fritz Lang’s Enduring Espionage Thriller
August 18, 2016
By Jeremy Carr. Fritz Lang’s Spies gets underway with a burst of kinetic energy, its first 15 minutes or so a case study in the advancement, endurance, and perhaps surprising vibrancy of late silent cinema. Released in 1928, this crime-thriller has a rapid-fire opening that drops the viewer headlong into […]
Lo and Behold – Can You Hear Me Now?
August 18, 2016
By Elias Savada. Werner Herzog’s documentaries tend to explore interesting lands or unusual people: the Chauvet caves in France (2010’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams), the frozen beauty of Antarctica (2007’s Encounters at the End of the World), or bear lover Timothy Treadwell (2005’s Grizzly Man) Now he catches up to something we find around […]
Time in “the Shack”: A Fuller Life
By Tony Williams. “The hatemongers and reactionaries are the most loathsome thorns in the eye of a great Democracy. Every generation has its own and they must be fought and defeated” (William Friedkin reading from A Third Face [2002] by Samuel Fuller). A Fuller Life is a daughter’s cinematic tribute to […]
La Chienne: Renoir Begins
By Christopher Sharrett. While the film is credited with bringing German Expressionism to French cinema and thus another step toward film noir, the film is notable for its sense of stillness….” My title is a bit misleading, since Jean Renoir made a number of films in the silent era (none […]
Under the Sun: Unmasking North Korean Propaganda
By Johannes Schönherr. Under the Sun, a documentary by Soviet-born and -raised director Vitaly Mansky, starts off like an slice of life type of cinéma vérité, filmed in the winter dawn hours in downtown Pyongyang. The city looks grey and run-down, and the streets between the aging apartment blocks are […]
Inspiring and Unsettling: Miss Sharon Jones!
August 12, 2016
By Jude Warne. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings are a seasoned, air-tight, top-notch funk-soul band. Via Jones’ musical talents and Bosco Man/Gabriel Roth’s analog recording and band leading genius, the group has managed to bring back the 60s funk and soul sound to our modern era, infusing it with a vibrant […]
From Bankruptcy to 9/11: Downtown Film & TV Culture 1975-2001 by Joan Hawkins
August 8, 2016
A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. Joan Hawkins’ recent multi-authored book, Downtown Film & TV Culture 1975-2001 (Intellect), is a heteroglossic text bringing together multiple genres – historical documents, interviews, conversations, focused analysis, and even traditional academic articles – to paint a chaotically vivid picture of the New York “downtown” […]