By Elias Savada. In case you’re not feeling enough dread after watching Natalie Portman push her way through The Shimmer in the unsettling Annihilation, there are similar aural, low-frequency bass rumblings that might send your mind and body into similar fits in the smaller but nearly as disquieting They Remain. […]
And the Animated Shorts Nominees Are…
By Elias Savada. The Oscar-nominated Animated Shorts in competition for the ceremony this Friday are a disparate, probing set. They include Lou, the 7-minute Pixar entry directed by Dave Mullins and produced by Dana Murray. If you saw Cars 3 at the Cineplex last summer, this charming, colorful CGI work was the better […]
Looking Back to Tehran: An Interview with Milad Alami on The Charmer
By Ali Moosavi. Milad Alami is yet another one of the many Iranian diaspora directors working today. He was born in Tehran, raised in Sweden, and learned his trade in Denmark. The Charmer (2017), his first feature film, and has won a string of awards at major film festivals. The […]
More Complications: Films of the New French Extremity by Alexandra West
A Book Review by Alex Brannan. When James Quandt coined the term “New French Extremity” in a piece for ArtForum, he referred to such a naming as something a “critic truffle-snuffing for trends” might do (“Flesh and blood”). Perhaps to his own chagrin, he was snuffing in exactly the right […]
Pedestrian Action: 7 Guardians of the Tomb
February 23, 2018
By Elias Savada. The Mummy was a huge, expensive flop last year, and relics of the archaeology digs genre are still up and about (Lara Croft is due back shortly). But if you have a craving for some lame action adventure down under from Down Under, 7 Guardians of the Tomb […]
Coincidence and Conviction: Irving Pichel’s Tomorrow is Forever (1946)
February 22, 2018
By Jeremy Carr. It takes a sustained suspension of disbelief to accept what is tendered by Tomorrow is Forever. To permit the premise of this 1946 romantic drama, it is imperative for one to pardon its convoluted plotline and its unyielding dedication to coincidence. And fortunately, such is the quality of […]
Too Much “Up-skirt”: Lipstick Under My Burkha
February 21, 2018
By Devapriya Sanyal. Alankrita Srivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha looks at the lives of four women who live in Hawai manzil: Bua ji, who has forgotten her own name as no one calls her by that name anymore; Leela, who works in a neighbourhood beauty parlour and soon to be married; and […]
Bare Emotion: An Interview with Scud on Voyage
February 20, 2018
By Gary M. Kramer. The mono-monikered Hong Kong writer-director-producer, Scud (born Danny Chan Wan-Cheung) has been making distinctive films for the past decade. His debut, City Without Baseball (2008), co-directed with Lawrence Lau, was based on stories of the Hong Kong baseball team, who also starred in the film. The […]
Unsung Hollywood Journeyman – Jean Negulesco, the Life and Films by Michelangelo Capua
A Book Review by Louis Wasser. “I’m the last of Hollywood’s dinosaurs.” – Jean Negulesco (124) Although, in retrospect, the stars seemed to align during the years of Jean Negulesco’s birth and death (1900-1993) for him to be tagged a Hollywood-Golden-Age director, the Romanian immigrant had little clue what his […]
Laughing at the Land of Oddz: Closure
February 15, 2018
By Elias Savada. There have been plenty of movies that have skewered the sunbaked air of Los Angeles and the strange people who breathe it – Mick Jackson’s L.A. Story and Robert Altman’s The Player remain two of my favorites – but folks, if you find somewhere showing writer-director Alex Goldberg’s Closure following its world […]