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 […]
The Spiral and the Fugue – This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia by Joan Neuberger
Thomas Puhr
October 7, 2019
A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. Joan Neuberger’s This Thing of Darkness (Cornell University Press, 2019) illustrates, perhaps more than any other cinema studies text I’ve read, the staggering attention to detail some filmmakers bring to their work. Subtitled Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia, it chronicles the inception, troubled […]
An Artist’s Obsession: Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2018)
Yun-hua Chen.
October 7, 2019
By Yun-hua Chen. Salvodor Simó, the layout artist for Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (2017), The Jungle Book (2016) and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), collaborated with the scriptwriter Eligio R. Montero and adapted Fermín Solís’ graphic novel on the true story of how Luis Buñuel […]
Divided: Son – Mother
Ali Moosavi
October 7, 2019
By Ali Moosavi. The majority of films occupying the cinema screens in Iran belong to either of two genres: social dramas and comedies. The Iran-Czech Republic joint production, Son – Mother (Pesar – Madar, 2019) which premiered at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, at first appears to be a […]
The Magic Bullet that Is Jim Allison: Breakthrough
Elias Savada
October 7, 2019
By Elias Savada. Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, please step aside…at least for 91 minutes…and allow the world to shine a light on a man unknown to most of us, but who wholeheartedly deserves our attention and admiration. He’s not your big name science guy and probably doesn’t contemplate […]
The Clown in the Mirror: Todd Phillips’ Joker
Jake Rutkowski
October 4, 2019
By Jake Rutkowski. There’s an old Simpsons bit that I often turn to in times of ambivalence: Homer, faced with the prospect of buying a cursed Krusty the Clown doll, weighs the pros and cons as outlined by the mysterious shopkeeper (a racist caricature recalling Keye Luke in Gremlins [1984]). […]
Redemption through Chaos: Takashi Miike’s First Love (2019)
Matthew Fullerton
October 4, 2019
By Matthew Fullerton. First Love (Hatsukoi), prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike’s sixtieth film in twenty-four years according to last count, is a wild and fun night-time ride through an urban war between Japanese and Chinese gangsters. Although First Love marks a full-fledged return for Miike to the Asian mafia genre, […]