By John Duncan Talbird. Writer-Director Desiree Akhavan’s funny and touching first film, Appropriate Behavior, is one of a type of smart, simple dramas that have appeared over the past few years: Rachel Getting Married (2008), Your Sister’s Sister (2011), Frances Ha, and Celeste and Jesse Forever (both 2012) to name […]
Bridging the Divides: The Fine Lines of Crime Across 110th Street
January 15, 2015
By Jeremy Carr. The holdup that begins the 1972 film Across 110th Street pits a trio of low-level amateurs against an established, well organized and, up to this point, efficient group of professional criminals. The end game is a case full of money, but what is ultimately achieved, more than […]
Revulsion and Derision: Antichrist, The Human Centipede II and the British Press
By Martin Smith. Despite increased transparency and liberalisation at the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) in recent decades, Britain remains one of the most censorious democratic countries in the world. Annette Kuhn’s model of censorship, outlined in her Cinema, Censorship and Sexuality: 1909-1925, details censorship as a process “produced […]
The Dance of Youth: Mariana Rondon and Marité Ugás on Bad Hair
By Jude Warne. Mariana Rondon is an expert articulator of youth. In her award-winning 2007 film Postcards from Leningrad she tackled elements of her own particular young person’s experience. Now in her latest release, Bad Hair, she offers up a tale of misunderstanding and miscommunication between one original and resilient […]
World Film Locations: Toronto: 2014
January 11, 2015
A Book Review By Carmen Siu. One hundred and eighty years young, the city of Toronto has a lot to boast about. ‘T-Dot’ is celebrated as a world-class city for its unique cultural diversity; vibrant music, film and literary scenes; and even, at times, its sports teams. But you’re more likely […]
Continuing the Tales: An Interview with Rakhshan Bani-E’temad
By Amir Ganjavie and Nojan Norouzi. Rakhshan Bani-E’temad officially represented Iran at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival with her film Tales, which has been harshly criticized in Iran by ultraconservatives who argue the film to be a dark and unrealistic portrayal of the nation. As a result, the film […]
Lost in Space
By Rajko Radovic. “I’m gonna wait till the stars come out. And see them twinkle in your eyes. I’m gonna wait till the midnight hour.” (Wilson “the Wicked” Pickett) “Nature has thrown away the key; and woe unto that fateful curiosity that might once manage to peer out through a […]
Foxcatcher: Wealth, Power, Repression
By Christopher Sharrett. I was far more impressed than I thought I might be with Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, a compelling film at various subtle yet complex levels. I should say first that as a person who spent his early life in Southeast Pennsylvania, I recall the John du Pont murder […]
“Isn’t it Bromantic?” – The Whole Damn Sony Mess, and What It Means
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Now that some time has elapsed between the Sony hack and the release of the film that apparently precipitated it, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s The Interview (2014), there are more than a few lessons to take away from the entire affair not only in the […]
Elia Kazan’s Boomerang!: A Film of Qualified Pleasures
January 4, 2015
By Chris Neilan. Between 1945 and 1957 Greek born Elia Kazantzoglou had no directorial equal in Hollywood. The films he made in that period were nominated for fifty Oscars, twelve of those for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), and launched the careers of Marlon Brando and James Dean. It was […]