By Ali Moosavi. Many film aficionados’ first memory of Thailand dates back to the 1956 film The King and I in which Yul Brynner played the King of Siam (Thailand’s former name). After a bloodless revolution in 1932, Siam became a democratic constitutional monarchy and changed its official name to Thailand. Since […]
North Korea’s International Movie Co-Productions, 1985-2012
By Johannes Schönherr. Kim Jong Il, the son of North Korea’s founder and Great Leader Kim Il Sung, went early in his youth in the direction of eventually inheriting his father’s position as leader of the country. At the same time, Kim Jong Il was an ardent cineaste with a […]
Hereditary: The Mother Again
By Christopher Sharrett. As the end credits roll for Ari Aster’s horror film Hereditary, we hear Judy Collins sing her hit song from the 60s, “Both Sides Now,” appropriate for the kind of film that wants to keep us guessing as it tries to walk a fine line between supernatural […]
Beyond the “Jacksplosion” – Quintessential Jack: The Art of Jack Nicholson on Screen by Scott Edwards
A Book Review by Louis J. Wasser. Scott Edwards’s new book (McFarland, 2018) is anything but a garden variety biography of an American A-list actor. There’s no story here of a film actor’s breaking loose from a difficult childhood. There’s no straight-up chronological filmography for a discerning reader to trace […]
Gore Down South: Two Thousand Maniacs! (Arrow Video)
By Jeremy Carr. As noted by no less an authority than Mr. MonsterVision himself, Joe Bob Briggs, to distinguish a good Herschell Gordon Lewis film from one that is of lesser quality is something of a futile effort. It’s hard to really say one title is better than another, just […]
A Treat Grows in Brooklyn: Hearts Beat Loud
By Elias Savada. One way or another, I always seem to get a plastic high when watching a film with an old fashioned record store. High Fidelity (2000), Empire Records (1995), Ghost World (2001), and even Last Shop Standing, Pip Piper 2012’s documentary about the rise and fall of about two […]
In Awe of Everything: The Gospel According to André
June 8, 2018
By Janine Gericke. I’ll start by saying that The Gospel According to André is a delightful film about a delightful human. The film is enthralling and made me laugh out loud at many points, which I wasn’t exactly expecting. One particular scene involving Isabella Rossellini’s two pigs, Boris and Pepe, […]
The Feminist Battle for Respect – The Girl: Marilyn Monroe, The Seven Year Itch, and the Birth of an Unlikely Feminist by Michelle Morgan
June 7, 2018
A Book Review by Anthony Uzarowski. Whenever one sets out to write a book about a real-life person, be it a traditional biography or any other kind of study or retrospective, the question of ethics inevitably comes to the forefront. How does one do justice to a life and work […]
Uncovering the Katyn Massacre Cover-up: An Interview with Piotr Szkopiak on The Last Witness
By Sergey Toymentsev. Piotr Szkopiak’s The Last Witness offers a fictional rendition of a cold-blooded execution of 22,000 Polish officers and civilians by the Stalin’s secret police in 1940, a horrific slaughter known as the Katyn massacre, of which both the US and British governments were well aware yet deliberately […]
On Compiling The Encyclopedia of Racism in American Film
June 5, 2018
Editor Salvador Jiménez Murguia recently published The Encyclopedia of Racism in American Film (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), a project that covers the breadth of material it promises and features work by several top scholars in film, including Film International Co-Editor Matthew Sorrento and contributor Tom Ue. Murguia discusses the project below. In the intro, […]