By Christopher Sharrett. Yann Demange’s White Boy Rick is a smaller-budget film of the season almost buried by franchise movies like The Nun (of “the Conjuring Universe”), Predator (another franchise reboot), and the usual cascade of juvenilia. The film deserves notice. I want first to take note of one of […]
Film Scratches: Queen of the Nile Digest – Cleopatra Burst (2016)
October 4, 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. Cleopatra Burst is a 4 and a half minute found footage work by Dina Yanni with a very straightforward structure. Eleven […]
Film Scratches: Moving Between the Worlds – Trapped Between Frames (2014)
October 4, 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. Trapped Between Frames is a poetic 11 minute video by Nazare Soares which uses film as a metaphor for the experience […]
Film Scratches: Seduced by Spectacle – Where the Night is Going (2015)
October 4, 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. Near the beginning of Where the Night is Going, Mike Hoolboom’s sophisticated eleven minute essay film, a subtitle announces “On the […]
Cinema of Cascades: Victor Kossakovsky on Aquarela
October 3, 2018
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 […]