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 […]
Unlovely Spectacle: D.A. Miller on Call Me By Your Name
By David Greven. An exchange I had with an older, straight, white academic in Film Studies serves as an instructive example of a particular phenomenon that I will call the Miller Effect. Hearing me express admiration for Ang Lee’s 2005 film Brokeback Mountain, which I consider a masterpiece, he stared […]
Embedded in Reality: A Conversation with Raoul Peck on Young Karl Marx
By John Duncan Talbird. When Raoul Peck was nominated for an Oscar last year for his documentary about James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, to many he seemed to have appeared from out of nowhere. But his first feature film, the New York City immigrant drama, Haitian Corner (1987), […]
A Misguided Adventure: A Wrinkle in Time
March 10, 2018
By Elias Savada. If I were a 12-year-old girl (particularly one of color), I probably would be anxiously awaiting, with all my BFFs, the arrival of A Wrinkle in Time, the transformative adaptation (as opposed to the dismal 2003 television version, also brought to you by Disney) of the beloved, best-selling […]
“Too Beautiful for Brilliance” – Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
March 8, 2018
By Anthony Uzarowski. Hedy Lamarr was a movie star for whom the term glamour might have been invented. As far as celluloid goddesses go, she was the crème de la crème, perhaps the most beautiful face to ever have graced the silver screen. During the Second World War, Lamarr offered legions of […]
Swimming Through: Rhonda Mitrani on Supermarket and Adrián Cárdenas on Canoe Poems
March 6, 2018
By Gary M. Kramer. Two worthwhile narrative short films – Supermarket by Rhonda Mitrani, a Miami-based filmmaker, and Canoe Poems by Adrián Cárdenas – premiere March 13 at the Miami Film Festival as part of the program, Supermarket and More Short Films. Both take mind-bending approaches to their stories and […]