By Gary M. Kramer. At this year’s Miami International Film Festival, there are some interesting debuts, some intriguing slow-burn films, and some compelling documentaries. Here is a rundown of a half-dozen titles screening at this year’s fest. Pahokee is the first feature-length documentary by co-directors Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan. […]
Deliberate Relief: Visconti’s Death in Venice (Criterion Collection)
February 26, 2019
By Gary M. Kramer. Death in Venice, Luchino Visconti’s sumptuous adaptation of the 1912 Thomas Mann novella, has been released on DVD and Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection in a new 4K digital restoration. The film is a classic story of unrequited love as Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde) becomes […]
A Cinephile’s Cinephile – Mysteries of Cinema: Reflections on Film Theory, History and Culture 1982-2016 by Adrian Martin
Jeremy Carr
February 25, 2019
A Book Review by Jeremy Carr. At the very least, Adrian Martin’s Mysteries of Cinema: Reflections on Film Theory, History and Culture 1982-2016 (Amsterdam University Press, 2018) makes the reader want to watch more movies. Not a specific genre of movies, nor those of a particular nation or movement, nor […]
Gods and Penguins: The 2019 DC Independent Film Festival
February 25, 2019
By Gary M. Kramer. The DC Independent Film Festival, unspooling March 1-10 in Washington, DC, is celebrating its 20th year in 2019. This year’s program features dozens of features and shorts, along with a tribute to director Phillip Noyce, who will present three of his features. Here is a rundown of […]
Twilight of the Idol: Eastwood’s The Mule
James Slaymaker
February 21, 2019
By James Slaymaker. Like many late-period Eastwood films, The Mule is a revisionist genre piece with a pronounced self-reflexive streak. It only takes a glimpse at the poster to deduce that the figure of Eastwood – as a cinematic persona, as an actor, as an ailing body – will be […]
Film Scratches: Poetry of the Downtrodden – Short Films of Jeremy Gluck (2017)
February 20, 2019
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. Jeremy Gluck is a Canadian-born artist living in Wales. Two of his recent short films have an unusual way to combine […]
Film Scratches: Remixing as Distillation – Praxis Selection from Index
February 20, 2019
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. Index, the DVD label that specializes in collections of experimental work by Austrian artists, has assembled this 97 minute selection from […]
A Career Cut Short – Laird Cregar: A Hollywood Tragedy by Gregory William Mank
Tony Williams
February 19, 2019
A Book Review by Tony Williams. “It was not only his desire to play heroic roles that made him diet, but the hope that he would attract a young lover through his own beauty. He never did and he was too innately shy to be aggressive.” (DeWitt Bodeen) (1) For […]
The Compulsive Writer-Director’s Guide – Making Your First Feature Film by Dominick Bagnato
Mads Larsen
February 18, 2019
A Book Review by Mads Larsen. If you have a few hundred thousand dollars to burn, and although you have no experience, you are obsessed with making your own film – no matter how bad it becomes – then Making Your First Feature Film by Dominick Bagnato (McFarland, 2017) could […]
Fighting in America: Tim Sutton’s Donnybrook
Thomas Puhr
February 15, 2019
By Thomas Puhr. It’s only fitting that writer-director Tim Sutton’s latest, Donnybrook (2018), opens with a voyage by boat. Like Odysseus, Jarhead Earl (Jamie Bell) undergoes a long journey that culminates in a bloody showdown. Waiting for him at the end of the river is the titular underground fight, which […]