By Jacob Mertens. Ramin Bahrani—known in the indie festival circuit for his subtle, observational features Man Push Cart (2005), Chop Shop (2007), and Goodbye Solo (2008)—enters the current festival year with a film that pushes past the scope of the individual and toward grand meaning. Specifically, he seizes on the […]
Finding a Place: Katharine Isabelle on Torment (2013)
By Paul Risker. Katharine Isabelle’s discovery of films could not have been more different than my own. My place has always been on the spectatorial side of the silver screen, whilst for the actor her encounter with film from a young age was interactive and set in motion experiences she […]
The Return of I’m Alright Jack (1959)
By Paul Risker. “I’m alright Jack” is English slang for an individual focused solely on his/her self-interest. Though John and Roy Boultling’s 1959 satirical masterpiece borrows the phrase for its title, it’s not a film lost in its own self-interest or in possession of a complacent air. With a more […]
The Duke of Burgundy: Sex Film, No Nudity
By John Duncan Talbird. Peter Strickland’s new film, The Duke of Burgundy, is a cleverly beautiful and beautifully crafted exploration of the humiliation of servitude and the power struggles that take place in a relationship. It’s about the compromises and the banality of routine that comes with love. And it’s […]
Two Days, One Night: Woman at Work
By Christopher Sharrett. I have been meaning for some time to applaud the work of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Their new film Two Days, One Night seems the appropriate occasion for recognition, but all of their films merit regular revisiting and, in my view, celebration. But Two Days may be […]
Hans Helmut Prinzler’s Sirens & Sinners: A Visual History of Weimar Film 1918-1933 (2013)
January 31, 2015
A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. Having reviewed books on cinema, one of its main pleasures is discovering unexplored clefts in the art’s brief history. There’s always something new. Did you know, for instance, that in the early days of cinema, studios employed photographers to capture onset moments rather than […]
The Fault in Our Films: Hollywood and the Illness Narrative
By Sheana Ochoa. Anyone who has watched the scene in the trailer of The Theory of Everything when Stephen Hawking’s character pulls himself up a staircase knows the film is a heavy hitter. Atop the stairs a robust, healthy baby curiously stares down at his helpless father in a macabre […]
The Babadook: Ghosts in the Bedroom
By Christopher Sharrett. Australian filmmaker Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook is last season’s fascinating, much-discussed contribution to the horror film, a genre that has fallen on hard times in the last quarter-century. I find the film engaging, although my enthusiasm is qualified. It is incoherent at the narrative and ideological levels, […]
The Tedious Body Horror of Wetlands (2013)
By James Teitelbaum. “The vagina reeks of life and love and the infinite et cetera. O vagina! Your salty incense, your mushroom moon musk, your deep waves of clam honey breaking against the cold steel of civilization; vagina, draw our noses to the grindstone of ecstasy, and let us die […]
Iran of Today: An Interview with Reza Mirkarimi
January 27, 2015
By Amir Ganjavie. Reza Mirkarimi’s Today has been selected to represent Iran at the Oscars in 2015, after the film’s recent screening at the Toronto Film Festival (TIFF). According to Jonathan Rosenbaum, “in some respects, the plot’s departure as well as the conclusion of Today may remind us the ‘first’ Iranian New Wave, Ebrahim […]