By Matthew Sorrento. Review Filmmaker David Shields found an ideal style to document the onscreen (but off the field) career of NFL running back Marshawn Lynch (2007-18). Far from a fan documentary, Lynch: A History uses collage to portray the news media’s possession and the public’s consumption of a star player […]
Three from the Open City Documentary Festival 2019
October 21, 2019
By Ali Moosavi. Three interesting documentaries screened at the Open City Documentary Festival in London, September 4-10, 2019. Sergei Loznitsa, the distinguished Ukrainian director known for films such as A Gentle Creature (2017) and Donbass (2018), in fact started off as a documentary filmmaker. In his return, Trial (2018), he has put […]
Father’s Day: Family, Masculinity and Ant Timpson’s Come to Daddy (Fantastic Fest)
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
October 17, 2019
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. There’s a scene in Ant Timpson’s debut feature Come to Daddy where Elijah Wood’s character, Norval Greenwood, is being verbally abused with such an extraordinarily blend of both cruelty and swear words that by the time actual physical violence rears its head, it’s almost a relief. Cringefully […]
Joker: Notes from Underground
Christopher Sharrett
October 16, 2019
By Christopher Sharrett. In what follows I am conscious that Todd Phillips’ Joker is another addition by a corporation to its “DC universe,” although it is spoken of as a “stand alone” film (with no relevance to comic book mythology?). I am also aware that many aren’t interested in this […]
Before Kane – Marching Song: A Play by Orson Welles with Roger Hill, Edited by Todd Tarbox
October 14, 2019
A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. As we move further into the new millennium, we appear to benefit not only from development of new technologies enabling access to visual material previously unavailable, but also the emergence of important documents sometimes referred to but usually inaccessible to the general reader outside […]
Juvenile Offender: Nicholas Winding Refn’s Too Old To Die Young
James Slaymaker
October 13, 2019
By James Slaymaker. It’s been less than a decade since the momentous critical and commercial success of Drive catapulted Nicolas Winding Refn from niche provocateur to international household name, yet the idea that the director was once poised to take the film industry by storm already seems patently ridiculous. Refn […]
Tangled Webs: Minos Nikolakakis’s Entwined (Toronto International Film Festival)
October 12, 2019
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. With its world premiere in the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival’s Discovery program, stalwart short film director Minos Nikolakakis turns to his feature debut with the extraordinary neo fairy tale Entwined, weaving the folkloric textures of the old into a contemporary scenario with profound results. After the […]
“Cinema is strong and some people are afraid of it”: François Ozon on By the Grace of God
October 11, 2019
By Alex Ramon. Speaking with Film International last year, François Ozon asserted that, for him, “the story comes first” when choosing a project. In his new film, By the Grace of God (Grâce à Dieu) Ozon draws for the first time on current events for the narrative, telling the story of […]
Blackwood Politicized – William McGregor’s Gwen
October 8, 2019
By Tony Williams. Gwen (2019) is one of those rare surprises in contemporary film reviewing. Rather than fall into the usual mindless patterning of most generic films constantly regurgitating and exhausting past formulas in the usual “repetition-compulsion” of most studio productions, it excitingly offers something different. Produced by a number […]
Forest for the Sleaze: The Prey (Arrow Video)
October 8, 2019
By Rod Lott. One of the first lines uttered in 1983’s The Prey is “Good chow,” a simple statement that could double for this obscure slasher film: far from gourmet, assuredly not healthy, but hitting the spot for the time being. In 1948, portions of the Rocky Mountains’ Keen Wild […]