By Elias Savada. There’s an unsettling blandness flowing through The Catcher Was a Spy, a well photographed and impressively designed film about a fascinating character who made a mark in two wildly divergent professions. It’s a fictionalized account of Major League Baseball player Morris “Moe” Berg, as based on Nicholas Dawidoff’s […]
Life Commodified: Adilkhan Yerzhanov on Gentle Indifference of the World
June 21, 2018
By Ali Moosavi. When discussing world cinema, Kazakhstan is not a country which immediately springs to mind. Like many of the former Soviet Republic countries though, it is beginning to make a name for itself. These efforts received a major boost this year when the Kazak director Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s film, The […]
Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice: Against All Doctrine
By Christopher Sharrett. I have been meaning for some time to put pen to paper about Andrei Tarkovsky, about whom I’ve been hesitant for decades. A few remarks on the occasion of Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray of the director’s final film might be a good starting place for a consideration. […]
Film Scratches: Following the Logic of the Eye – noCOM (2014)
June 20, 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. noCOM stands for “no comment,” according to filmmaker Walter Ungerer, and that is appropriate because this ten minute short, a sequence […]
Film Scratches: Wonderland of Pain and Survival – Toogie’s Trip to Bukuokuka (2016)
June 20, 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. Toogie’s Trip to Bukuokuka is a kind of S/M Alice in Wonderland, a menacingly surreal and fascinating 24 minute film by […]
Film Scratches: Euphoria Unmasked – Careless Camera Work on Clapham Common (2016)
June 20, 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 Jack Wormell’s aptly named five minute silent video Careless Camera Work on Clapham Common, he assembles shots taken from a […]
Film Scratches: Recent Short Films by Chang Po-Yang
June 20, 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. Chang Po-Yang is a young filmmaker from Taiwan. Here is a round-up of his recent experimental shorts. Je est un autre […]
Life Interrupted: Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside on América
June 18, 2018
By Gary M. Kramer. América, directed by Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside, is a lovely, poignant meditation on eldercare. The filmmakers capture the rhythm of the life of Diego, a young man living in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, who is called back to Colima to care for his grandmother, América, who […]
Fiercely Unpredictable: First Reformed
By Thomas Puhr. Paul Schrader takes Christianity seriously: no small feat, given that many “Christian” movies today are of the schmaltzy, Sunday School variety (i.e. God’s Not Dead, Heaven Is for Real). The writer-director’s latest offering, First Reformed (2017), reconfirms his status as one of America’s most unpredictable filmmakers (his […]
Kitsch Shining Bright: Jeffrey Schwarz on The Fabulous Allan Carr
June 14, 2018
By Tom Ue. Emmy Award-winner Jeffrey Schwarz’s many documentaries include Tab Hunter Confidential (2015), about the 1950s heartthrob and movie idol, and Vito (2011), the gay activist, film scholar, and author Vito Russo. His latest project centres on Allan Carr, best known for his producing work in Grease (1978) and the […]