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 […]
The Boy Who Fell To Earth: The Astronaut’s Bodies (Die Körper der Astronauten)
By Elias Savada. Russian-born and German-trained Alisa Berger shows off her experimental and artistic tendencies in The Astronaut’s Bodies, a graduation project for the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. Her first feature is a meditative family drama that extends its light story line (also by Berger) into juxtaposed threads […]
Negotiating Entanglement: An Interview with Jason James
February 13, 2018
By Tom Ue. Entanglement, the latest film by director Jason James, follows the story of Ben Layten (Thomas Middleditch) after he discovers that he nearly had an adopted sister: his parents abandoned their plan to adopt a child after learning that they had him. Ben searches for, and begins to […]
Marcel Pagnol’s “Marseille Trilogy”: An Essential Reemerges on Criterion
By Christopher Weedman. Among the most impressive film restorations of 2017 was Marcel Pagnol’s Marseille Trilogy (1931-36), which I reviewed last March when Janus Films screened it theatrically in select US cities. Those not fortunate enough to live near such splendid art-house and independent film venues as the Film Forum […]