By Elias Savada. Music and cinema are both universal languages. I can’t think of another film that blends the best of these audio and visual worlds into a most enjoyable adventure about mixed cultures and disparate lives that becomes the sum of much more than its parts. Morgan Neville, the […]
Close Encounters of the Angelic Kind: Here Comes Mr. Jordan on Criterion
June 25, 2016
By Tony Williams. Unlike previous DVDs I’ve reviewed, Here Comes Mr. Jordan is my first and highly pleasurable viewing of a film I’d often heard about but never seen. I also missed Warren Beatty’s 1978 re-make Heaven Can Wait, a title change made with that archetypal Hollywood mode of illogical sensibility […]
The 2016 Tribeca Film Festival
June 24, 2016
By Michael Miller. The 15th Tribeca Film Festival unspooled April 13 – 24, 2016 in New York presenting nearly 200 features and shorts from around the globe. Here are six noteworthy titles that screened at the fest. Several non-fiction and a feature films probed the nature and process of art […]
A New Voice for Cinema: Chloé Leriche and Jacques Newashish on Before the Streets
June 22, 2016
By Paul Risker. Canadian filmmaker Chloé Leriche recently found herself involved in the Wapikoni mobile program, where she mentored documentary filmmaking made by natives that inspired her own work and led to her feature debut, Avant Les Rues (Before the Streets, 2016). Before the Streets is not only a first milestone step for its director, […]
The Horrors of “PYOTR495”: An Interview with Blake Mawson
By Tom Ue. Blake Mawson is an actor and writer, known for his performances in Freddy vs. Jason (2003) and Poison Ivy: The Secret Society (2008). His short film “PYOTR495” earned the Best Emerging Artist Award at the Inside Out LGBT Film Festival. Set in Russia, in 2014, the horror film […]
Documenting the Migrant Worker: Filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes on Lupe Under the Sun
June 20, 2016
By David A. Ellis. Filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes, born in Mexico City in 1983, was interested in the world of moving images from an early age. He moved to the United States at the age of six and attended college in UC San Diego, Madrid and Mexico City to receive a degree in International […]
The 2016 AFI Docs Festival
June 20, 2016
By Gary M. Kramer. This year at the AFI Docs festival, June 22-26, there are several features and shorts depicting unique individuals working in odd jobs and hobbies. From sewage diving to train surfing, chicken showing and crime photography, this year’s non-fiction filmmakers found some fascinating subjects and stories. Here […]
Film Scratches: Structures to Contain Women – Noe Kidder’s Zone Four (2015)
June 20, 2016
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 Women of Zone Four did not belong to themselves,” begins the first voice-over narration of Zone Four, a dense and […]
Film Scratches: Escape into Hell – M. Woods’ A Day in a Place (2012)
June 20, 2016
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. “I don’t know why I do it. I just go away,” announces a young woman in a short blue dress and […]
A World “Whit” Large: Barcelona on Criterion
By Elias Savada. During his initial foray into filmmaking back in the 1990s, Whit Stillman was being hailed as a conquering hero successor to such cinematic titans as Preston Sturges, Leo McCarey, and Ernst Lubitsch, the creators of witty comedies that are still enjoyable many decades after they were made. […]