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
Matthew Sorrento
March 22, 2019
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
Ali Moosavi
March 14, 2019
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. […]
“What Might Have Been”: The Magnificent Ambersons (Criterion Collection)
March 14, 2019
By Tony Williams. “Anybody who does things their own way while they’re working with a corporation is going to be problematic.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum, audio-commentary, The Magnificent Ambersons Criterion Collection DVD When Criterion rises to the appropriate occasion of combining the best type of digital restoration with the most appropriate supplementary features, […]
Heisting Nixon: Mark Steven Johnson on Finding Steve McQueen
March 12, 2019
By Jake Rutkowski. The 1972 United California Bank robbery and the gang that pulled it off don’t occupy a lot of space in the popular American bank heist imagination. The story has been covered in some true crime television documentaries here and there, but it doesn’t quite have the flashiness of […]
Welcome to the Universe: Captain Marvel
March 12, 2019
By Elias Savada. Packing a $153 million weekend wallop here in her home country, and a huge $455 million on her native planet, Captain Marvel, the latest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, rallies itself after a sluggish start, and ultimately proves itself an acceptable crowdpleaser. Brie Larson, the Oscar-winning actor […]
Tradition Against Trafficking: Birds of Passage
Ali Moosavi
March 11, 2019
By Ali Moosavi. Films about drug trafficking in Central and South America have been on our cinema and TV screens almost continuously, from Scarface to Sicario. In recent years, there seems to have been more films and TV series about drug barons in Columbia and Mexico than any other topic; […]
Beyond the Stereotypes of a Selfie: An Interview with Agostino Ferrente
Yun-hua Chen
March 8, 2019
By Yun-hua Chen. Agostino Ferrente, the director of Selfie, started this film project with the initial intention to document the story of the 16-year-old Davide Bifolco, who was mistakenly shot dead by carabinieri in the Neapolitan district of Traiano. After casting several teenage boys and girls, the director gave a […]
What We’re Left with at the End: Jupiter’s Moon
John Duncan Talbird
March 7, 2019
By John Duncan Talbird. In the opening seconds of Kornél Mundruczó’s White God (2014), we see a bird’s-eye view of Budapest, but a Budapest absent any people. It’s reminiscent of the opening of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later… (2002) where downtown London has been wiped clean of people from what […]
A Problem of Catharsis and Urban Space: Ondi Timoner’s Mapplethorpe
Mina Radovic
March 6, 2019
By Mina Radovic. Robert Mapplethorpe is one of New York’s famous black-and-white photographers of the 1970s: coming out after the Warhol generation and in touch with the underground, Mapplethorpe is remembered for his distinct use of monochrome composition, imbued with a sense of rigid formalism coupled with controversial and often […]