By Gary M. Kramer. Tumbledown, directed and written, respectively, by the husband and wife team of Sean Mewshaw and Desi Van Til, premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The film has Hannah (Rebecca Hall) meeting cute with Andrew (Jason Sudeikis) who wants to write a book about the former’s […]
Tribeca 2015 Festival Report
May 5, 2015
By Gary M. Kramer. This year’s Tribeca Film Festival provided a showcase for a pair of fascinating documentaries and a quartet of intriguing genre films. Here are reviews for a half-dozen films from the fest. Uncertain, which earned directors Anna Sandilands and Ewan McNicol the Albert Maysles New Documentary Director […]
Super Women and the Plight of Tel Aviv Immigrants
May 3, 2015
By Hannah Grayson. Yael Kipper and Ronen Zaretsky’s documentary film follows a group of cashiers as they work in a Tel Aviv supermarket. What we view is a tender portrayal of Russian and Israeli women moving through their everyday tasks and concerns. The plot contains few moments of drama, and […]
The Tribeca Shorts of 2015
May 2, 2015
By Gary M. Kramer. The Tribeca Film Festival’s shorts programs, curated by Sharon Badal offer slices of life that are often more satisfying than the features that play alongside them. The programs are thematically linked. The New York programs—one narrative, one documentary—are always highlights of the fest. In the “New […]
A Place in Myth: Portia Doubleday on After the Ball (2015)
May 2, 2015
By Paul Risker. From Pascal Chind’s short film Extrême Pinocchio (2014) to a contemporary retelling of Cinderella in After the Ball (2015), if as wisdom suggests there are only a limited number of archetypal stories to be told, then these two films frame storytelling as being comparable to the game […]
Motherhood and Mourning in Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Unknown Woman
By Francesco Pascuzzi. Already with the film’s title, Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Unknown Woman (La Sconosciuta, 2005) sets out to toy with the audience’s perspective and its perception of the lead character Irena (Ksenia Rappoport). When the protagonist arrives in town[1] and lands herself some menial work in an upscale residential […]
Un Flic: Melville and the Ambiguities
By Tony Williams. On initial release, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Un Flic (1972) disappointed many and has remained in critical limbo to the present day. Despite growing appreciation of its visual style, the reasons why the director adopted such an ambiguous and seemingly incoherent approach still remain mysterious. Any film that followed […]
Call for Submissions – The Second Annual REEL EAST FILM FESTIVAL (August 21-23, 2015)
April 29, 2015
The Reel East Film Festival is seeking exciting, uncompromising and unique visions from around the world to present at our Second Annual event at the historic Ritz Theatre in Oaklyn, NJ on August 21-23, 2015. We are looking for short films in the following categories: Narrative, Documentary, Experimental, Student and […]
A Journalist and a Murderer (i.e., a Writer’s Fantasy): True Story (2015)
April 27, 2015
By Jude Warne. For a reviewer, for a journalist, to review and critique a film that champions and practically makes love to the journalist vocation is a uniquely complicated task. Writers believe that the art of writing is of utmost importance, but who knew everyone else did, too? Rupert Goold’s […]
John Schlesinger’s Darling (1965): the British Screen in Transition
By Paul Risker. There is a natural tension that permeates the Anglo-French relationship: two countries that have intertwined histories, have fought wars as both allies and foe, and even within the political sphere of the European Union tensions have continued to endure as if they are a natural formation. So […]