By Ali Moosavi. It is very unusual for Cannes, or indeed any film festival that I care to remember, to provide a warning in the festival program for a particular film. In Cannes this year this honour was bestowed upon Lars von Trier’s The House that Jack Built, shown out […]
Arthouse Redux: Claire’s Camera
June 4, 2018
By Elias Savada. I’m a latecomer to the work of South Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo, but I recently caught Night and Day (2004) and Right Now, Wrong Then (2015), which reveal this Seoul-born and Korean-then-American-trained filmmaker’s unconventional, character-driven films as interesting and sometimes forceful human studies (as well as being festival […]
The Story Comes First: An Interview with François Ozon on Double Lover
June 1, 2018
By Alex Ramon. From the patriarchy-busting provocations of his debut feature Sitcom (1998) to the understated elegance of Frantz (2016), François Ozon has created a body of work that’s among the most diverse and confounding in contemporary French cinema. Pegged initially as an enfant terrible, Ozon announced himself as a distinctive […]
Mountain: Epic to the Extreme
May 31, 2018
By Elias Savada. The word “breathtaking” doesn’t do justice to Australian documentarian Jennifer Peedom’s Mountain. It’s so far beyond that. The manner of the imposing photography, which often suggests someone climbing upside down, is just one of the remarkable things about this emotionally driven exploration of the majesty of rock. What […]
Defying Ideology (and the Academy) – Mr. Novak: An Acclaimed Television Series by Chuck Harter
A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. When recovering from reviewing lesser works by well-established publishers, whether direct-to-library or university presses, it is often a welcome relief to read something outstanding by publishing companies that deserve to be much better known than their “illustrious” peers. Granted that not everything by […]
Mungiu’s Deceptive Simplicity: Beyond the Hills (Criterion Collection)
By Christopher Sharrett. I have commented on this site at length on Cristian Mungiu’s masterpiece Beyond the Hills (2012), and while it deserves thorough revaluation, I will note merely its importance by way of a remark on its Blu-ray release by Criterion. It is worth saying that this is the […]
Film Scratches: Sleepy in Sulaymaniyah – Dream City (2016)
May 29, 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 Dream City, a short feature, American filmmaker Emma Piper-Burket documents her friendship with Diana Jaf, a young Kurdish Iraqi woman. […]
Film Scratches: Recent Short Films of Jacques Spohr
May 29, 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. Jacques Spohr is a French filmmaker now based in Athens. Here is a sampling of his recent shorts. Les Coups du […]
Film Scratches: The Words Behind The Dance – Una Mina (2016)
May 29, 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. Una Mina is an eight minute dance film by Argentinian filmmaker María Papi. The footage shows actress Gesche Picolin performing tango […]
Hefting the Masterpieces: Filmworker
By Elizabeth Toohey. Do we really need another Stanley Kubrick documentary? There’s the comprehensive Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001), with its reverent celebrity talking-heads – Tom Cruise and Woody Allen! Spielberg and Scorsese! – praising Kubrick’s technical genius, and Kubrick’s adoring wife pooh-poohing rumors that he was controlling […]