Fessenden Meets a Brooklyn Frankenstein: Depraved

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 […]

Probing Bannon: Alison Klayman and Marie Therese Guirgis on The Brink

By Elias Savada. The Kimpton Hotel Monaco is just 9 blocks east of the White House, the work place of Stephen K. Bannon, a friend and strategist of the Commander in-Chief until his banishment from official duties in 2017. He still haunts the Capitol Hill neighborhood where he lives and […]

Wildlife: Family in the Dark

  By Christopher Sharrett. Among the few films that impressed me last season was Paul Dano’s first film as director, Wildlife, based on a book (which I have not read) by Richard Ford. The film received some applause when it opened, then vanished, to be covered over by the rubbish […]

Larry Cohen, 1936-2019

By Christopher Sharrett. Death is ruthless, but it seems to have been especially vicious lately. We have received word that Larry Cohen, the last of the great quartet of 60s-70s horror film innovators, has died. A statement about the full contributions of Cohen will be forthcoming in the print edition […]

Film Scratches: Exuberant Nihilism – Nihelious (2017)

Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. In the deliriously kitschy world of Nihelious, a 10 and a half minute animated look at love and marriage […]

Film Scratches: Suspending the Rules – Poetry of Dreams (2017)

Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Poetry of Dreams is a short film, just over two minutes long, by Hayk Matevosyan, an Armenian-born artist based […]

A “Spinster’s” Last Stand: Woman at War

By Michael Sandlin. Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson, in his sophomore directorial effort Woman at War, imagines the chaos that ensues when a middle-aged spinster’s frustrated motherly instincts compete with her radical eco-political commitment to defeat her country’s pollution-friendly patriarchy. Much like Erlingsson’s bizarre equinophilic tale Of Horses and Men (2014), Woman […]

The Uncanny Invades: Jordan Peele’s Us

By Matthew Sorrento. The most unfortunate aspect of Jordan Peele’s Get Out was its creator’s attempt at self-criticism. Some months after the film’s release, Peele accepted an offer from Reddit to respond to member theories on the film. In the video, he is welcoming and down-to-earth but swiftly dismisses a theory […]

Idris at the Helm: Yardie

By Ali Moosavi. The media have been so preoccupied with whether or not Idris Elba will become the next James Bond that somehow his first venture into directing, Yardie,  has been kept largely under the radar. Yardie is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Victor Headley. […]