By Sotiris Petridis. Baskin (2015), the directorial feature film debut of Can Evrenol, is a modern Turkish horror film that deserves the attention of every horror aficionado, even if from a less likely country of origin. The film is based on Evrenol’s 2013 short film, which shares the same title […]
Letting Welsh Drama Breathe: Gareth Bryn on The Passing
April 11, 2016
By Paul Risker. The dark psychological drama The Passing (2016) is a moment in which the Welsh landscape is blighted by yet another brooding tale. Although just as characters of film are stalked by their dramatist creators who make them the prey of dramatic provocation, so too can the landscape be […]
Curating the 2016 Tribeca Shorts – A Conversation with Sharon Badal
April 9, 2016
By Gary M. Kramer. It’s Tribeca Film Festival time again, which means my annual conversation with Sharon Badal, curator of the festival’s shorts programs. This year’s fantastic line up offer some new programs: California Dreaming, which features stories from the other coast; Warped Speed, a first-ever Sci-Fi program (in honor […]
The Visual Beauty of Marguerite
April 8, 2016
By Cleaver Patterson. At one point, about half way into Marguerite (2015), the drama by French writer/director Xavier Giannoli, singing teacher Atos Pezzini (Michel Fau) is trying, diplomatically, to describe his pupil Marguerite Dumont (Catherine Frot) to some of those who have assembled to hear her latest performance. Where Marguerite […]
On Trauma, Loss, and Fatherhood: An Interview with Joachim Trier on Louder Than Bombs
April 7, 2016
By Amir Ganjavie. Louder Than Bombs, Joachim Trier’s third feature, tells the story of an aging schoolteacher (Gabriel Byrne) who grapples with the recent death of his wife (Isabelle Huppert) and tries to find a way to reconcile with his two sons (Jesse Eisenberg and Devin Druid). Quite a bold entry […]
Orlacs Hände: A Constant Dilemma
By Amy R. Handler. Reaching back to time’s beginnings, Orlacs Hände (1924) forever touched the future, but at what price? Robert Wiene’s cinematic interpretation of Maurice Renard’s Les Mains d’Orlac (1920), cannot be neatly labeled expressionist in spite of its creation near the end of Weimar’s expressionist movement. Certainly there […]
All the Fire: The use of sexual imagery as a way for attracting cinema audiences in 1950s America
By Anthony Uzarowski. The 1950s are often seen as the time of Hollywood’s greatest splendour, yet the reality of the time was plummeting cinema attendance, which by 1953 came to be half of what it had been in 1946. In the face of radical social and economic changes, as well […]
Film Scratches: Violence Tamed – Wheeler Winston Dixon’s An American Dream (2016)
April 4, 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. An American Dream, a new 34-minute found footage film by Wheeler Winston Dixon, consists of public domain footage clips, almost all of […]
Fear and Trust: Dana Ivgy on Performing Next to Her
April 4, 2016
By Paul Risker. While fear and trust can be perceived as two opposing forces within the human experience, for actor Dana Ivgy these two forces converged in her portrayal of an autistic sibling in the touching Israeli drama Next To Her (2014). “It was obviously a very big challenge and lesson for […]
This Still Can’t Be Happening! – Callan Potter on Bruno and Boots: Go Jump in the Pool!
April 3, 2016
By Tom Ue. In 1976, Gordon Korman’s seventh grade track-and-field coach-turned English teacher had given the class time to write: he completed what became This Can’t Be Happening at Macdonald Hall (1978, updated in 2003), the first installment in his Macdonald Hall (Bruno and Boots) series (1978-1995). The novel appeared two […]