By Tom Ue. My Life with James Dean finds Géraud Champreux (Johnny Rasse), the film’s central protagonist, presenting his first feature film – also titled My Life with James Dean – in Normandy. His box office may be pitiable, but this screening proves life changing. This comedy is Dominique Choisy’s third feature, […]
When a Documentary Isn’t: Inside Slovenian Non-Fiction Films
Noah Charney
January 10, 2019
By Noah Charney. Slovenian documentary films are at their best when they do not appear to be documentaries. When we imagine documentaries, we tend to think of the History or Travel Channel variety. That’s the type that I occasionally appear in and have also helped to write and produce, so […]
First Man and Last Things
By Christopher Sharrett. I have just recently seen Damien Chazelle’s First Man after putting it off during its initial release. The film holds some interest for me, unlike his previous two films, Whiplash (2015) and La La Land (2016), the first a throwback, I think, to films of the 1970s […]
Hail Mary! – Fanchon The Cricket (1915) and Little Annie Rooney (1925) from Flicker Alley
By Tony Williams. These DVD restorations represent another important collaborative venture on the part of The Mary Pickford Foundation and Flicker Alley, a company specializing in promoting often forgotten achievements of the past. The occasion offers cause to rejoice for previous cultural heritage in contrast to the ignominious productions of the present. While […]
Film Scratches: Meta-Fetishes – Flowers and Bottoms (2016)
January 7, 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. In Flowers and Bottoms, an amusingly strange six minute film by Christos Massalas, we begin by watching the back of a […]
Film Scratches: A Quest on Wheels – The Oneiric Bicycle (2016)
January 7, 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. In The Oneiric Bicycle, Sam Klickner’s 22 minute surreal fable, we see a young bicyclist (Natalie Miller) wearing a red scarf […]
Film Scratches: Compelling Mystery – The Visiting Lament (2016)
January 7, 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. In The Visiting Lament, Sam Klickner’s breathtaking five minute short, he uses a simple composition of figures in a blank, grey […]
Representation of Women in Israeli Cinema: An Interview with Author Rachel S. Harris
By Anna Weinstein. Rachel S. Harris’s book Warriors, Witches, and Whores: Women in Israeli Cinema (Wayne State University Press, 2017) is a fascinating feminist study of Israeli cinema and changes in the film industry since the 1990s. The book examines film representations of Israeli women, including narratives in classic Israeli films […]
Of Masculinity, Mortgages, Moral Redemption, and MeToo: My “Practically Perfect” Thoughts on Mary Poppins Returns
By Elizabeth Toohey. Because I wasn’t planning to write about Mary Poppins Returns, but only to watch it recreationally with my six-year old, I did something verboten for a reviewer, which was to read a few reviews before actually viewing the film. Manohla Dargis’ scathing pan of the sequel for the […]
Just Slightly Off: True Stories
December 28, 2018
By John Duncan Talbird. My friends and I loved the Talking Heads when we were in college. You could not go a week in our house without hearing at least one of their most recent albums: Speaking in Tongues (1983), Stop Making Sense (1984), Little Creatures (1985). (Even today, I don’t […]