Review

By Elias Savada. OK, kids, who among you doesn’t know who Norman Lear is? The few of you who raised your hands, shame on you. (I tested this question on a friend half my age, and he thought I was talking about the guy who dropped a lot of LSD. […]

By Chris Neilan.  Here’s something to brighten the day of any self-respecting cinephile: the unearthing of a forgotten film by a bona fide American master. And not just any master, but Robert Altman. Few American directors are better loved than Altman, the own-tune-following iconoclast who defied structuring paradigms, paid attention to his […]

By Jessica Baxter. I can’t remember exactly how old I was when I first stumbled upon René Laloux’s surreal animated French language sci-fi film, Fantastic Planet (1973). I assume I was old enough to read subtitles, but I’m not 100% sure because the visuals are engaging and unusual enough to […]

By Elias Savada. Problems are afoot in Woodyland. The jokes are there, albeit fleetingly and the best ones deal with gallows humor. The romantic comedy-drama script seems regurgitated from some of director-writer Woody Allen’s earlier works, and his alter-ego, Jesse Eisenberg, is back (after 2012’s To Rome With Love) for […]

By Chris Neilan.  Directors who blend genre elements with an arthouse sensibility are rarely short of fans or plaudits. Take new darling of the American independent scene Jeremy Saulnier, whose career-making sophomore feature Blue Ruin (2013) applied a realist monkey-wrench to the nuts and bolts of the revenge thriller. Or […]

By Elias Savada. With big nods toward Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs), Wes Craven (The Hills Have Eyes), and Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia), twenty-something writer-director Mickey Keating has chomped down on a big slab of 1970s grindhouse meat and spat out Carnage Park, […]

By Cleaver Patterson.  One has to question why some filmmakers see fit to remake films which were considered classics the first time round – is there so little original material and imagination out there that they have to revert to old material for inspiration? Take for instance 1945’s exquisite British […]

By Christopher Sharrett. It occurs to me that the best (the only?) films seriously challenging the current international War on Women come from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, often by women filmmakers either unknown by many without access to foreign films, or quickly forgotten, because they cannot afford a second […]

By Paul Risker. “Bare bones thrown to a hungry dog…do nothing to appease its hunger.” – Thich Nhat Hanh, Thundering Silence: Commentaries on the Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Catch a Snake (2009). On the surface it may feel strange to see such a philosophical thought in a film review […]

By Elias Savada. Yes, there has been a lot of discussion – some quite vocal and inanely misogynistic – about the new Ghostbusters, an all-female cast reboot of the endearing 1984 film classic that spawned an animated television series, some video games, and an unending (and quite fascinating) trivia entry on […]