By John Duncan Talbird. In 2002, director Steven Shainberg won a special jury prize at the Sundance film festival for Secretary, his second feature film, an adaptation (with screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson) of Mary Gaitskill’s eponymous and iconic short story. Starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Shainberg’s film transformed Gaitskill’s stripped-down […]
More Stupid Human Space Tricks – Alien: Covenant
May 15, 2017
By Elias Savada. Thirty-eight years ago this month, the world experienced a horror like no other. Ridley Scott’s Alien intensely attacked worldwide audiences. No one wanted to swim into the ionosphere. Our species has never been the same. We’ve now survived three sequels and one prequel (2012’s Prometheus) as the man […]
Eldritch Ecstasy!: Everything You Need to Know about Caltiki The Immortal Monster
By Tony Williams. With one exception, this new release does live up to the second part of the above caption. Long revered by devotees of horror, science fiction, and its post-war Italian exponents this notable film of a disputed canonical tradition has not been generally available in a good copy […]
Amit Masurkar on Newton: A Tribeca Film Festival Interview
May 11, 2017
By Gary M. Kramer. Newton is co-writer/director Amit Masurkar’s nifty film about title character (a charismatic Rajkummar Rao), an election official who is sent to the jungle in central India to monitor a particular voting district. He is warned about Maoist guerrillas operating in the area, as well as explosives. […]
Six Windows onto Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe – An Interview with Maria Schrader
May 11, 2017
By Matthew Fullerton. Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe, Austria’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 89th Academy Awards, tells the story of the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) in exile, from 1936 to 1942. Written and directed by German actress (Aimee & Jaguar, 1999; Deutschland 83, 2015) and director […]
A look back at the Alien franchise, and why fans have reason to be cautiously optimistic about Alien: Covenant
By Vanessa Crispin. A milestone for many and still going strong with the fans, Alien (1979), was not only the first film in a successful franchise, but also a first in many other ways. Just in time for the upcoming Alien: Covenant, let’s take a look at what made the […]
Taking Chances: An Interview with Doug Liman on The Wall
By Jeremy Carr. Doug Liman’s lifelong interest in filmmaking first paid off with the breakout indie hit Swingers in 1996, his second directorial effort (his first was the little-seen 1994 comedy Getting In). The stylishly frenetic Go (1999) followed, then came The Bourne Identity (2002), the initial installment of the […]
A Tradition All Its Own – Forgotten British Film: Value and the Ephemeral in Postwar Cinema by Philip Gillett
A Book Review by Tony Williams. Despite appearing in an independent press publication, this study deserves neither to be forgotten nor regarded as ephemeral since it represents a very distinctive and well researched contribution to the area of British Cinema. Although this field has been well documented over the past […]
In Need of Russian Heroes: An Interview with Alexander Nevsky on Black Rose
By Sergey Toymentsev. Alexander Nevsky is a Russian bodybuilder turned actor, writer, producer, and now director. Before coming to Hollywood in 1999, he established himself as an enthusiastic promoter of fitness as a lifestyle in post-communist Russia. Besides being a media star and hosting his own TV show there, he […]
It’s a Family Affair: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
May 5, 2017
By Elias Savada. Yeah, a lot of folks have been waiting for this one. Three years ago, the creative and marketing folks behind Guardians of the Galaxy tossed the big budget dice and won big. The visionary sci-fi mashup wowed worldwide audiences and nine out of every ten critics, while also pulling […]