By Martin Kudláč. The Locarno International Film Festival has a notorious sweet spot, Piazza Grande, one of the biggest squares in Switzerland where it is hosting open-air night screenings for over 8000 viewers. It is not just tourists´ landmark empillared with traditional arcades but also a programming one where a carefully […]
Rehistoricizing the Gaze – Elena Gorfinkel’s Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s
November 20, 2018
A Book Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. There’s a shared lightning bolt moment I’ve discussed at length with many other film critics and academics – mostly (although certainly not only) women – where in our university undergraduate years we were first rocked by the realization that there was a whole body […]
Born to Kill: El Angel
By Michael Sandlin. Director Luis Ortega’s El Angel (co-produced by Pedro Almodovar) is a quietly disturbing but ultimately unsatisfying character study based on real-life 1970s Argentinian teen serial killer Carlos Robaldo Puch. Puch’s good looks and high intelligence defied the then-accepted image of the serial murderer as scraggly failed-hippie eyesore. […]
A Formidable Pairing: Green Book
November 15, 2018
By Elias Savada. The exceptionally crisp performances by Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen are but two of the great things about Green Book, a very solid contender for Best Picture accolades, and much more. This heartwarming, soul searching inspired-by-a-true-story features well-educated virtuoso pianist Don Shirley (Ali) and his Italian-American chauffeur-protector-confidant Tony Villelonga […]
Notes on Pablo Larraín
By Christopher Sharrett. Some months ago I published in this location brief remarks on Pablo Larraín’s remarkable film Jackie (2016), one of the most compelling works of its season. The film had me going back, revisiting Larraín’s other work, which resulted in my present view that he is in the […]
Pork Pie Hats Off to The Great Buster: A Celebration
November 9, 2018
By Elias Savada. The breakneck parade of Hollywood celebrities seems endless in Peter Bogdanovich’s love letter to silent film comedian Buster Keaton. It feels like Friends, Romans, and Countrymen are marching before the camera to recount the influences galore that the great actor and filmmaker has had on their lives. Keaton, […]
Screwball/Great Depression Denial Syndrome: My Man Godfrey (Criterion Collection)
By Tony Williams. Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey (1936) is admittedly one of the best screwball comedies of the 1930s that provided witty dialogue, entertainment, and “acceptable” references to the Great Depression in the limited manner Hollywood allowed at this time. Far removed from the more gritty Warner Bros’ […]
Lensing a Colonial Past – Parameters of Disavowal: Colonial Representation in South Korean Cinema by Jinsoo An
October 31, 2018
A Book Review by Madeline Hawk. Using prolific Korean New Wave director Im Kwon-Taek to introduce Korean cinema’s preoccupation with its colonial past, Jinsoo An’s Parameters of Disavowal: Colonial Representations in South Korean Cinema (University of California Press, 2018) engages a close reading of an early scene in The Genealogy (1978), […]
Homages, Attack!: Killer Kate!
By Janine Gericke. I really wanted to like Killer Kate! It’s clear that director Elliot Feld loves horror movies and has grown up watching the classics. But, the film is so full of homages and references that it fails to create anything new. Kate (Alexandra Feld) and her younger sister […]
Animal Kingdom: Cornel Wilde’s The Naked Prey (Criterion Collection)
By Jeremy Carr. The opening narration of The Naked Prey (1965) sets the scene in the African wilderness and the nature of humanity in this volatile land, where white men besiege the region in search of tusks and slaves. It is a cruel and bloody backstory, humanity as vicious and portending a […]