By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Joseph Lawson is an American filmmaker who is an unabashed special effects fan, action movie enthusiast, and utterly pragmatic about how films get made today in a rapaciously competitive environment. He’s a commercial filmmaker, working in Hollywood, making films as entertainment. Along the way, he’s getting […]
Sensing the Rhythms of Youth: Daniel Patrick Carbone on Hide Your Smiling Faces
September 21, 2014
By Paul Risker. Arguably the icon of onscreen childhood angst is Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959). His desperate gaze out to sea is one that is seared onto the cinematic consciousness. Fast-forward more than half a decade and Hide Your Smiling Faces (2013) sparks the […]
Film4 FrightFest 2014
September 19, 2014
By Cleaver Patterson. FrightFest, the London based film festival which takes place each year at the end of August, prides itself in showcasing the best of horror, both international and homegrown. This year’s event was no exception, with more films than ever before showing in this its fifteenth year. With […]
Breaking the Western Trail: Hawks’ Red River on Criterion
September 18, 2014
By Matthew Sorrento. In 2008, the Criterion Collection issued Anthony Mann’s The Furies (1950) with the restored film sleeved alongside the 1948 source novel by Niven Busch. The film will remain “lesser” Mann, with The Naked Spur (1951), The Man from Laramie (1955) and Man of the West (1958) as […]
The Passion of Life: Federico Fellini’s Il Bidone
September 14, 2014
By Robert Kenneth Dator. As with any truly influential director, Federico Fellini—simply, Fellini—has been talked to death. However, with so much talk generated through so much derivative thought, it is possible to perpetuate precept rather than forge original observation. So, let us come out from behind all the humanism, neo-realism, […]
A Thriller in Brief: on Point Mugu
By Paul Risker. Inevitably there must be a point of origin, and whilst it would be an exaggeration to term the short film Point Mugu (2013) as such, it is a film of firsts for three individuals who have expanded and explored their creative horizons. Actress Amelia Jackson-Gray couples her writing […]
Starred Up (2014)
September 9, 2014
By Sam Littman. Within the first fifteen minutes of David Mackenzie’s prison drama Starred Up, it becomes clear that the titular felon, 19-year old Eric Love (Jack O’Connell), belongs in prison, though in this case the offense that sent him to a Young Offender Institution and the misbehavior that caused […]
Santo in the Museum of the Mexican Film Industry
September 8, 2014
By John Burns. It seems that a number of historians and critics of Mexican film would be happier if the films starring lucha libre wrestler Santo had never been produced. One British university’s website on Mexican cinema called the Santo films “invariably stupid.” In Carl J. Mora’s exhaustive study of […]
Truth in Character: An Interview with Virginia Madsen
By Paul Risker. What is in a number? Well in answer to a self-posed question, something of significance, as Virginia Madsen has or will have donned by the conclusion of next year a collection of guises that reaches into triple figures. So who is Virginia Madsen? There is Virginia Madsen […]
The Boxtrolls (2014)
September 5, 2014
By Cleaver Patterson. American-made animated films appear to have a fascination with middle European cities and architecture. Take The Boxtrolls for instance: the latest work from Laika Entertainment—the production company behind recent hits Coraline (2009) and Paranorman (2012)—has a predominance of gabled rooftops and twisting cobbled streets, which not only lends the […]