By Janine Gericke. Clocking in at a cool 78 minutes, Sara Driver’s documentary Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat is a Basquiat crash course. The film provides insight into the teenager he was and the artist he became. Named after Basquiat’s catchphrase, Boom for Real uses […]
Deadpool 2: Shtick Happens. Again.
By Elias Savada. So, as numerous superhero universes collide in worldwide multiplexes, you might wonder if there is an escalating case of mega-budget overload on the horizon. 20th Century-Fox’s Deadpool 2 arrives three weeks after Disney’s oversized Avengers: Infinity Wars shredded box office records in advance of this weekend’s match-up, which […]
At War with Trump, Etc: 2018 Cannes, Week One
By Ali Moosavi. The honor of opening the 71st Cannes Film Festival went to the Iranian director, and multi Oscar winner, Asghar Farhadi’s new film Everybody Knows. This thriller stars the real-life couple Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, plus the always impressive Argentinian actor Ricardo Darin. In the press interview following […]
“As Usual, Ladies First”: Manners, Manuals, and The Hunger Games
By Richmond B. Adams. During “The Reaping” sequence from Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) “volunteer[s] as tribute” to save her younger sister Primrose (Willow Shields) from almost inevitable “death in the upcoming arena” (22). While exceptional for District 12 of Panem, Katniss’ interposition is quite familiar […]
Comic Discoveries – The Marcel Perez Collection: Vol. 2
May 15, 2018
By Jeremy Carr. Marcel Perez certainly isn’t the most renowned name in silent screen comedy. He’s likely not even among its top ten most recognizable figures. But that didn’t stop composer and DVD producer/distributor Ben Model, along with a legion of 153 Kickstarter supporters, from pushing forward a volume of […]
Times Remembered – Junior Bonner: The Making of a Classic with Steve McQueen and Sam Peckinpah in the Summer of 1971 by Jeb Rosebrook with Stuart Rosebrook
A Book Review by Tony Williams. It is frequently true that publishers like Bear Manor Media not only offer the possibility of valuable access to books that are rarely considered by corporate concerns, whether inside or outside academia, but give any reviewer both light relief and pleasure from the heavyweight […]
Beautiful Hopelessness: Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here
By Thomas Puhr. On paper, Lynne Ramsay’s breathtaking You Were Never Really Here (2017) sounds like one of Luc Besson’s off-the-cuff side projects, ala Taken (2008) or Colombiana (2011). After a mysterious war veteran, Joe (Joaquin Phoenix, who is only getting better with age), rescues a senator’s abducted daughter from […]
An Insufficient Measure of Novelty: Jim Loach’s Measure of a Man (2018)
May 12, 2018
By Brandon Konecny. There’s a scene in Measure of a Man where Bobby (Blake Cooper) bickers with his sister Michelle (Liana Liberato) after she knocked the scoop off his chocolate-dipped ice cream cone. A shirtless Pete Marino (Luke Benward) interrupts their squabbling and introduces himself to Michelle. This leads to a […]
Market Values – Screening Stephen King: Adaptation and the Horror Genre in Film and Television by Simon Brown
The Shining (1980) A Book Review by Tony Williams. During my final year in what was soon becoming Thatcher’s “green and septic isle” even before Blair and Tessie, I read quite a number of early Stephen King novels such as Carrie (1974), Salem’s Lot (1975), The Shining (1977), Cujo (1981), The Dead […]
Consistent Passion, Little Fanfare: RBG
May 4, 2018
By Elizabeth Toohey. Towards the end of the powerful new documentary RBG, we follow the 85-year-old Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg into a sculpture garden where she is being given a tour. Of a figure of a woman clad in armor standing at the ready, the guide explains, “It’s called […]