By Yun-hua Chen. Watching Aquarela, a documentary under the section of Out of Competition in Venice International Film Festival, is definitely one of the most inspiring experiences during this year’s program. It is everything that cinema should be and at the same time, something that we have never seen on screen […]
“Good Sausage”: Felix Feist’s The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950) from Flicker Alley
By Tony Williams. Imagine Lee J. Cobb (1911-1976) playing a star role as an honest cop turned bad played for a sucker by femme fatale Jane Wyatt (1910-2006), an actress not usually associated with such parts but more as the contented spouse of Robert Young (1907-1998) in Father Knows Best […]
Abdolreza Kahani’s Free Like Air to Be Produced in Toronto
September 26, 2018
Iranian filmmaker Abdolreza Kahani will release his latest movie, the dark comedy Free Like Air, in Toronto in November. The movie is currently in pre-production, with a mix of actors from France, Canada, and Iran expected to star. Reza Attaran, a prominent Iranian actor, is now attached, after having collaborated with Kahani on […]
Assault of Independence: Lizzie
By Janine Gericke. Lizzie Borden’s infamous story is horrifying. On August 4, 1892, Borden’s father and stepmother were found bludgeoned to death in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Lizzie was arrested for the crime, but ultimately acquitted. According to the end credits of Craig William Macneill’s Lizzie, the all-male […]
Pushing Life to the Edge: Free Solo
September 26, 2018
By Elias Savada. Alex Honnold dreams the impossible dream, and he climbs where the brave dare not go. Unlike Don Quixote, he defies death by climbing mountains of sheer granite. Without a rope. Free solo climbing is a solitary affair that is exhilarating to the extreme. A single misstep generally proves […]
Yakuza’s Angry Young Man: Street Mobster (Arrow Video)
September 25, 2018
By Jeremy Carr. Street Mobster found director Kinji Fukasaku at a pivotal point in his career, a situation reflected in the evolution of a genre he had so effectively worked to fashion. Fukasaku made his directorial debut in 1961, with the Sonny Chiba-starring Fûraibô tantei: Akai tani no sangeki, and from […]
Ultimate Moments: NYFF Shorts 2018
September 25, 2018
By Gary M. Kramer. Two shorts programs at this year’s New York Film Festival feature new and exciting works by debut, established, and returning filmmakers. The International Shorts Program II opens with the U.S. premiere of Veslemøy’s Song. Canadian filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz’s black and white short revolves around the largely […]
Sleep No More: Or, If It Hadn’t Been for Those Meddling Kids….
By Alex Brannan. If one were to just slightly retool Phillip Guzman’s Sleep No More (aka 200 Hours) – eliminate the gore and profanity, shift the characters’ ages, move the time period back a couple decades, and make the least consequential character a canine – the film could easily pass […]
The Sublime Art of Ashby: Hal
September 21, 2018
By Elias Savada. Hal (no relation to the sentient computer in Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey), is a reflective meditation on the (high) life and (best) films of Hal Ashby, a director of note during the 1970s, when he churned out award-worthy films that now shape this debut documentary […]
A Woman Pioneer Speaks: Lisa D’Apolito on Love, Gilda
September 21, 2018
By Janine Gericke. What makes Lisa D’Apolito’s new film Love, Gilda so special is that, like the 2015 documentaries Listen to Me, Marlon and Ingrid Bergman: in Her Own Words and Samantha Fuller’s A Fuller Life (2013, also discussed here), Gilda tells us her story. Out of Gilda’s own journals, recordings, photographs, and home movies, D’Apolito […]