By Rod Lott. Whereas several of Brian De Palma’s works famously suggested tools and utensils as phallic, Yann Gonzalez’s Knife+Heart removes all doubt. Right from scene one of his giallo-influenced LGBTQ arthouse thriller, young and able-bodied men succumb to the fatal thrusts of a serial killer’s knife whose blade is concealed […]
All Fight, No Feeling – Master Z: Ip Man Legacy
Yun-hua Chen
April 12, 2019
By Yun-hua Chen. Action itself is not enough to compose a good action film – we see yet another hard-earned lesson in Master Z: Ip Man Legacy. Directed by Woo-Ping Yuen, the famous Hong Kong action choreographer, and produced by the same producers of Ip Man 1, 2, 3, 4, […]
Little on the Syndrome: Stockholm
April 12, 2019
By Gary M. Kramer. Stockholm, written and directed by Robert Budreau, recounts the “absurd but true” 1973 Norrmalmstorg (Kreditbanken) robbery and hostage crisis that introduced the “Stockholm Syndrome” – the condition where a hostage bonds with their captor. This peculiar crime drama starts out rocky, but then manages to exert a […]
Daredevils of the Red Circle and Other Cliffhangers: Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu and Republic’s Drums of Fu Manchu (1940)
Geoffrey Mayer
April 11, 2019
“Daredevils of the Red Circle and Other Cliffhangers” is a blog on serials by Geoffrey Mayer, the author of Encyclopedia of American Film Serials (McFarland, 2017). At last they truly were face to face – the head of the great Yellow movement, and the man who fought on behalf of the entire white […]
Hope from the Past: Dziga Vertov: Life and Work (Volume 1: 1896-1921) by John MacKay
Tony Williams
April 10, 2019
A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. In 1904, Lenin once wrote a monograph, “One Step Forward, two Steps Back” (1) that later appeared in Volume 7 of his Collected Works. Despite the relevance of an appropriate historical context, the name of a former Bolshevik leader will obviously raise hackles […]
Not “Just Another Giallo”: The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (Arrow Video)
April 9, 2019
By Rod Lott. If the first two minutes of Riccardo Freda’s The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (1971) had failed to grab me, the next two of this 1971 giallo certainly would. Indoors at night, a beautiful woman suddenly becomes the opposite as acid is thrown in her face […]
In Retrospekt: An Interview with Esther Rots and Dan Geesin
Yun-hua Chen
April 8, 2019
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 […]