By Matthew Sorrento. Like all films in the series, the fourth installment of Toy Story (2019) concerns kids’ fears of abandonment, with lost toys working in place of children. Once again, the toys get lost for an adventure, for some form or return/reconciliation at the conclusion. There’s only so much […]
Theatrical, Organic Unity: Marcel Pagnol’s The Baker’s Wife (Criterion Collection)
Tony Williams
September 9, 2019
By Tony Williams. Though most notably associated with the Marseille Trilogy of Marius (1931), Fanny (1932), and Cesar (1936) as well as the first version of Manon of the Springs (1952), later remade in two parts by Claude Berri (1934-2009) in 1986 and 1989, Marcel Pagnol (1895-1974) also won acclaim […]
Two from Venice 2019: The Scarecrows and Corpus Christie
Ali Moosavi
September 7, 2019
By Ali Moosavi. Two films which premiered in the 2019 Venice Film Festival, both looking critically at the role of religion in modern society. The Scarecrows, written and directed by the veteran Tunisian director Nouri Bouzid is set in Tunisia in 2013. It deals with the aftermath of being freed […]
The Method to His Madness: Grady Hendrix and Satanic Panic
John Duncan Talbird
September 5, 2019
By John Duncan Talbird. Grady Hendrix is a novelist, sometimes-journalist, essayist, and screenwriter. He’s written several horror novels, including the very recent We Sold Our Souls, “a heavy metal take on the Faust legend.” He is one of the founders of the New York Asian Film Festival and, on his […]
Dachra: A Different Kind of Tunisian Revolution
Greg Burris
September 3, 2019
By Greg Burris. Early on in the Tunisian horror film Dachra (Abdelhamid Bouchnak, 2018), we see a class of university students as they listen to their professor’s instructions for their final assignment. The students are to arrange themselves into groups and produce a filmed investigative report on a subject of […]
Scared Second – American Horror Project: Volume Two (Arrow Video)
September 3, 2019
By Rod Lott. One could find irony in the United States’ collective history of regional horror films being written by a Brit. Instead, I choose to thank him for it. Stephen Thrower literally wrote the book on the subject in 2007’s seminal Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation […]
Oy, Vat a Story! Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles
September 3, 2019
By Elias Savada. At moments during filmmaker Max Lewkowicz’s lovely homage to one of the world’s greatest musicals, I was verklempt. I got choked up over Chaim Topol’s interpretation of Tevye the milkman in Norman Jewison’s film version of Fiddler on the Roof, and when Lin-Manuel Miranda breaks out into […]
Dividing Lines: Tony Richardson’s The Border (Kino Lorber)
Jeremy Carr
August 28, 2019
By Jeremy Carr. Immigration enforcement agent Charlie Smith (Jack Nicholson), who moves from Los Angeles to El Paso, where he joins the Texas sector’s border patrol, says he just wants to “feel good about something sometime.” But it’s not easy in his line of work, which is marred by futility, […]
A Complete Man of the World – Jean Gabin: The Actor Who Was France by Joseph Harriss
August 27, 2019
A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. Usually, I’m hesitant when presented with another biography for review. Despite the dedication and research involved, there often occurs a fundamental similarity in approach and, sometimes, lack of critical and insightful qualities when covering the actor’s films themselves. What makes them distinctive? Is […]
Danish Redux: After the Wedding
August 27, 2019
By Elias Savada. Sad to say, but it wasn’t a good idea for American filmmaker Bart Freundlich to remake the Oscar-nominated Best Foreign Language Feature Efter Brylluppet (After the Wedding), the 2006 film from Danish writer-director Susanne Bier. Bier, whose 2004 Danish war drama Brødre (Brothers) was also rejiggered for […]