By Yun-hua Chen. With a puzzle plotline that resembles Memento, Retrospekt focuses on two women, Mette and Lee Miller, whose life at home is tumultuous in different ways. Mette, very convincingly portrayed by Circé Lethem, is on parental leave after having her second child. Her husband is not as family-centered […]
Crimes and Pastimes: Screwball
Jake Rutkowski
April 5, 2019
By Jake Rutkowski. It’s hard to view the discourse around baseball’s most recent and protracted steroid use scandal as anything other than a proxy culture war, an outlet for the basest pearl-clutching and ideological chest-pounding. The pieces are all there: an institution steeped in perpetual nostalgia, aided by a media […]
The Last Silent Hound: Der Hund von Baskerville (1929)
Tony Williams
April 4, 2019
By Tony Williams. Like the recently restored Behind the Door (1919), Der Hund von Baskerville was shown at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival but was supposedly believed lost at one time. However, due to collaboration between Flicker Alley and the Polish film archive Filoteka Narodowa, this last silent version […]
Too Much and not Enough – 1968 and Global Cinema, Edited by Christina Gerhardt and Sara Saljoughi
Mads Larsen
April 3, 2019
A Book Review by Mads Larsen. The timing could hardly be better. Every month seems to throw more gasoline onto the political fire that this edited volume hopes to be a part of. But while editors Christina Gerhardt and Sara Saljoughi have written an introduction with ambitions that – if […]
Living the Truth: Claus Räfle on The Invisibles
Tom Ue
April 2, 2019
By Tom Ue. Claus Räfle has directed over forty feature-length documentaries for German television. Die Heftmacher earned the Grimme Award for best work of TV journalism. Der Kandidat, received honorable mention at the Max Ophüls Awards. His documentaries Blitzhochzeit in Dänemark and Die Stunde davor each received nominations for Best […]
Everywhere and Nowhere: Kent Jones’ Diane
Jeremy Carr
April 2, 2019
By Jeremy Carr. There is so much potential tragedy in the first twenty minutes of Diane that the film appears instantly in danger of over-stressing the point of its dramatic tension. This subdued, 2018 release, the debut narrative feature from Kent Jones – director of the documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015), director of the […]
Agnes Varda, 1928-2019
Christopher Sharrett
March 31, 2019
By Christopher Sharrett. I commented early this week on the ruthlessness of death. The occasion was my remembrance of Larry Cohen, a crucial figure of the American independent cinema. And now, we have word of the loss of Agnes Varda, a person I always thought pivotal to the European cinema. […]
For the Love of a Gangster: Ash is the Purest White
Yun-hua Chen
March 29, 2019
By Yun-hua Chen. Jia Zhangke’s latest, Ash is the Purest White, three years after his previous film Mountains May Depart (2015) which ambitiously spans from 1999 till futuristic 2025 and journeys from Fengyang in Shanxi Province to Perth in Australia, continues with his incessant probing of how China changes but […]
Filling a Gap: The Music of Charlie Chaplin by Jim Lochner
John Fawell
March 28, 2019
A Book Review by John Fawell. I’ve always been somewhat surprised by the amount of critical attention paid to Charlie Chaplin’s sound films, considering they represent, for the most part, his comedic talents in decline and his frustrated efforts to contend with a medium essentially hostile to his genius for […]
Fessenden Meets a Brooklyn Frankenstein: Depraved
March 28, 2019
By Elias Savada. Larry Fessenden has plenty of fans. A versatile producer, director, writer, editor, cinematographer, and actor in dozens of low-budget flicks, he’s left his mark for more than two decades on the horror genre. Since he’s heavily influenced by the classic Universal monsters, it is not surprising that his […]