By Christopher Sharrett. To Part 2. Hadewijch Hadewijch is the first of two films (the second is Hors Satan) directly focused on the pursuit of the spiritual. I should say first that the two films present a problem, since the search is embodied in Hadewijch in a hysterical young woman […]
Bruno Dumont and the Revival of the Human, Part 2
March 21, 2014
By Christopher Sharrett. To Part 1. L’Humanité Bruno Dumont’s second film has been termed by certain commentators a “remake” of La Vie de Jésus. The notion is bewildering. Yes, both films are shot in Bailleul, both films deal with often everyday, banal actions of characters, but to fail to note […]
Bruno Dumont and the Revival of the Human, Part 1
March 21, 2014
By Christopher Sharrett. Bruno Dumont is among our most important filmmakers, a fact that has gone mostly unnoticed outside Europe. His particular significance seems unrecognized in the US. There are very few critical essays about him of any depth and intelligence, except for a couple of notable contributions in Senses […]
Grand Piano (2013)
March 20, 2014
By Danny King. In the press notes for Grand Piano, director Eugenio Mira states the following: “Having been raised by wolves like Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, Brian De Palma and the Master of Masters Sir Alfred Hitchcock, when I first heard of Grand Piano’s premise, the feral infant film-geek in […]
The Spartans Meet The Muppets, or 300: Rise of an Empire
March 18, 2014
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. It would be a mistake to dismiss director Noam Murro’s sword and sandal “historical” pageant 300: Rise of an Empire (2014) entirely, if only because mainstream pop culture films can often tell us more about the times we live in than so-called “quality” films, since they […]
Surviving the Monster Mom: Child’s Pose
By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “I hope it’s like a mirror.” (Călin Peter Netzer on Child’s Pose) “They fuck you up, your mum and dad / They may not mean to, but they do.” (Philip Larkin, “This Be The Verse” [1971]) If a toxic abusive mother raised you, be forewarned. Child’s […]
Waking to Life: An Interview with Tom Gilroy on The Cold Lands
March 15, 2014
By Paul Risker. More than a decade has passed since actor Tom Gilroy stepped behind the camera to direct his first feature Spring Forward (1999). Gilroy returns to feature filmmaking with The Cold Lands, a meditative and dreamy tale of the passage of a few weeks in the life of […]
The Films of Jim Krell
March 10, 2014
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. One of the most original and iconoclastic personalities of the New American Cinema, Jim Krell created work that is simultaneously so important, and yet so unknown, that the news that his complete works are now being archived by Anthology Film Archives constitutes a major event, closing […]
The Selfish Giant: Greetings from History
March 10, 2014
By Axel Andersson. Oscar Wilde’s tale about the selfish giant who built a high wall around his garden can be thought about as a story in which all directions meet, the up and down of transcendental rewards and punishments and the side to side of earthly goings-on. A giant returns […]
The Narcissistic Sociopathology of Gender: Craig’s Wife and The Hitch-Hiker, Part 2
March 9, 2014
By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. To Part 1. While Dorothy Arzner’s Craig’s Wife (1936) revolves around a pathological female who is undone by her desperate attempts to conform to the norms of patriarchy during the depression era, Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hiker (1953) presents us with a male serial killer, another malignant […]