By Elias Savada. Baltimore filmmaker Joe Tropea tackles a not very pressing subject with his new film. It’s an admirable history lesson and enjoyable examination of Maryland’s long-deceased era of film censorship, a period that extended from 1916 to 1981. Most people don’t remember the state’s control over all film […]
Lakehouse Improvisation: Mikko Mäkelä on A Moment in the Reeds
By Tom Ue. With A Moment in the Reeds, London-based filmmaker Mikko Mäkelä seeks to fill the queer void in Finnish cinema: he returns, imaginatively and literally, to his native Finland through the character of Leevi (Janne Puustinen), who seeks to help his father Jouko (Mika Melender) repair their lakehouse. […]
Uma: Invoking Love, Death and an Elsewhere
By Devapriya Sanyal. Uma is Srijit Mukherji’s twelfth film in seven years. It is based on a real story, which by the director’s own admission he found on Facebook. He then set about writing a story based on the Bengali festival of Durga Puja, with an eponymous heroine, for Uma […]
“Animation is in My Blood”: An Interview with Ashkan Rahgozar on The Last Fiction
By Ali Moosavi. Iranian cinema has made its mark on the global film world thanks to film makers such as Kiarostami, Farhadi, Panahi and many other distinguished Iranian film makers who have attracted widespread critical acclaim and won numerous awards and accolades. One branch of filmmaking in which Iranian cinema […]
Nicolas Roeg, 1928-2018
By Dean Goldberg. On November 23th, 2018, a particularly cold and rainy Saturday afternoon, my friend, Jonathan David, a commercial director living in Los Angeles, texted me a headline about the death of director Nicolas Roeg: “I heard this on BBC Radio and immediately thought of you,” it chimed. Unfortunately, […]
Fair and Balanced, for Real – Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes
December 7, 2018
By Michael Sandlin. Alexis Bloom’s Divide and Conquer could have easily been conceived as a shameless liberal hit job on an easy target: far-right fake news guru and prolific sexual harasser Roger Ailes, founder of Fox News and the head bully-boy behind the modern Trumpian Republican political class. Yet this documentary […]
Choosing Your Own Family: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters
December 7, 2018
By Matthew Fullerton. Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest drama, the Palme-d’Or-winning Shoplifters (Manbiki Kazoku), is the story of an out-of-the-ordinary family: Osamu Shibata (Lily Franky) is a middle-aged man who, though physically able to work, prefers supporting his family through petty crime. He plies his trade with the boy Shota […]
The Man Who Would Be Scar – Henry Brandon: King of the Bogeymen by Bill Cassara and Richard S. Greene
A Book Review by Tony Williams. In one way, my title is misleading. Despite the impressive appearance of Henry Brandon’s Scar appearing as an appropriate “monster from the id” with blue eyes and European presence to John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (1956), this impressive labor of love, that could […]
Film Scratches: Self-Portrait of the Self-Portraitist – Astrid’s Self-Portrait (2015)
December 5, 2018
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. Astrid’s Self-Portrait is Rena Riffel’s experimental feature about a woman obsessively documenting her own life. The opening of the film, labeled […]
Film Scratches: Conditioned Responses – Recent Short Work by Steven Lapcevic (2014-2018)
December 5, 2018
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 mesmerizing and terrifying worlds created by 3d animator Steven Lapcevic we’re all just puppets, hyper-conditioned by the media into […]