By Melissa Webb. In David Cronenberg’s Shivers (1975), a parasite gets loose in an apartment complex and begins infecting the residents, who subsequently turn into zombie-like creatures needing to satisfy their most primal desires. A resident doctor must attempt to contain the threat within the building and prevent the parasite from […]
Film Scratches: A Network of Networks – Memento Mori (2012)
June 4, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Memento Mori, Dan Browne’s profound 28 minute short, starts off seeming more banal and simplistic than it really is. The title […]
Film Scratches: Pregnant Poetry – The River (2016)
June 4, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. The opening of Ya-Ting Hsu and Geoffrey Hughes’ The River, their 16 minute examination of the repeated traumas of Hsu’s pregnancy, […]
No Pity for Emily Dickinson: A Quiet Passion
June 4, 2017
By John Duncan Talbird. Terrance Davies’ most recent film, A Quiet Passion, is a strange drama. It is a biopic and a period piece, an adaptation without a source text, an homage, and a fiercely original work. Most of the action takes place inside the walls of Emily Dickinson’s home in […]
Phoenix Sans Gimmicks: You Were Never Really Here (Cannes 2017 Review)
June 2, 2017
By Ali Moosavi. Lynn Ramsey’s violent film noir was the last film to be shown at the Cannes Official Competition. It is based on a short novella by Jonathan Ames. Joaquin Phoenix has considerably beefed up to play the role of Joe, a heavy, doing jobs for a private dick. He […]
The Lights Are On, But Is Anybody Home?: House & House II on Arrow/MVD
June 1, 2017
By Jeremy Carr. The 1980s was a pivotal period for horror films. As low-budget “Video Nasty” provocations steadily faded from America’s grindhouse screens, the down and dirty days of the 1970s were getting displaced by family-friendly creature features and box office-busting franchises. Though there had been historical antecedents for decades, […]
A Brief Review of Alien: Covenant
By Vanessa Crispin. Since the release of Alien: Covenant, reviews have been of a mixed variety, some praising it for paying homage to the original, while others dismiss it as Ridley Scott’s possibly last foray into directing. And it is true, the latest film in the franchise is a mixed […]
When We Last Saw Her: An Interview with George Pappy on The Green Girl
May 31, 2017
By Irv Slifkin. Star Trek fans thought they knew Susan Oliver, as “Vina” the green alien woman in the abandoned series pilot episode “The Cage,” which featured Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike. She was so memorable that she was hired to play the same role in “The Menagerie,” the rebooted opening […]
The Roots of Social Change: Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs on Criterion
By Christopher Weedman. The Criterion Collection deserves to be commended for their continued efforts to bring greater attention to the underappreciated films of director Ermanno Olmi. It is regrettable that, over the past fifty years, this Italian filmmaker’s deeply humanist oeuvre has largely lived in the critical shadows of the […]
Home Is Where the Hermit Is: Wakefield
By Elias Savada. There is a hidden recluse swirling around our theaters (and video on demand), and his name is Wakefield. Please go find him. While Howard Wakefield seems normal enough when first spotted in the hustle and bustle crowds pushing air about the streets of New York City, his […]