By Tom Ue. The title cards of Sam Ashby’s first film The Colour of His Hair (2017) take us to the year 1954, with the sentencing of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Michael Pitt-Rivers, and Peter Wildeblood for homosexual offenses. This scandal, we learn, led the government to establish a committee […]
Deceit and Inconsistency: The China Hustle
March 30, 2018
By Travis Merchant. A decade has passed since the beginning of an economic recession that many still feel today. The recession of 2008 brought about a collapsed American market that desperately searched for a shining light to capitalize on to regain its losses. Consequently, it found China: a topic that Jed […]
Rebellious Departure: An Interview with Nanouk Leopold on Cobain
By Yun-hua Chen. Premiering at the Berlinale Generation 2018, Cobain is a film about the eponymous hero, a 15-year-old boy in Rotterdam played by the first-time actor Bas Keizer. As his drug addict and expectant mother Mia is unable to take care of him, Cobain is sent to a foster […]
Max Winkler’s Flower Sour
By Elias Savada. I didn’t like Max Winkler’s first feature, the dreary comedy Ceremony (2011), a quirky tic of a wedding crasher film. My impression of his directorial abilities hasn’t changed much in Flower, a jaded Valley Girl vigilante drama that screams “watch my petals wilt” as shell-shocked patrons wander […]
Andy Goldsworthy’s Landscape Art: Leaning Into the Wind
March 26, 2018
By John Duncan Talbird. In the opening of the new documentary, Leaning Into the Wind, artist Andy Goldsworthy tours a small home in the mountains in Brazil. To Western eyes, the dwelling might seem pre-modern, even decrepit. But to Goldsworthy, all he sees is the handcraft of the residence, the sturdy […]
Role-Playing Writ Small: I Kill Giants
March 23, 2018
By Elias Savada. Children dealing with their fears – although not those anxieties normally associated with horror genre tropes like The Dark, Loud Noises, and such – play a central role in I Kill Giants, which melds one Eastern Long Island, New York, family’s enigmatic trauma with monstrous, noxious beasts that […]
Comedy Killing Satire: The Death of Stalin
March 20, 2018
By Jake Rutkowski. The process of interpersonal grievances and small-scale ironies rippling out into matters of national security is at this point a calling card for celebrated Scottish satirist Armando Iannucci (he of Alan Partridge, The Thick of It / In the Loop, and Veep fame). It’s fair to say that […]
Redemption Post-Aparthied: Roland Joffé on The Forgiven
By Tom Ue. Produced, directed, and co-written by Roland Joffé, The Forgiven is an adaptation of Michael Ashton’s play The Archbishop and the Antichrist. The film stars Academy Award-winner Forest Whitaker as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who, in his work as President of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South […]
Hard Truths: An Interview with Marcio Reolon and Filipe Matzembacher on Tinta Bruta
March 15, 2018
By Yun-hua Chen. Shot in the southern Brazilian city Porto Alegre and directed by the duo Filipe Matzembacher and Mario Reolon, Tinta Bruta is a gentle portrait about Pedro, a young man who earns his living by performing on gay-oriented streaming platforms, and a city from which young people depart in […]
Family Values and Civic Duties: Fassbinder’s Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day
March 14, 2018
By Jeremy Carr. Rainer Werner Fassbinder was particularly adept at transitioning between the cinema and television (and theater, for that matter), starting the crossover just a few films in to his prolific directorial career, with Das Kaffeehaus, a TV movie released in 1970. In 1972, already with a mind-boggling 14 titles […]