By Jacob Mertens. How tempting it would be to open this review with some Kerouac quote, a burst of frayed genius from his late stage novel Big Sur to set the tone. No doubt, it would give a better idea of what Michael Polish’s film adaptation sets out to accomplish, […]
Commentary: Committed to Cypriot Cinema
November 11, 2013
By Stelana Kliris. Filmmaking in a developing country is a little like dancing the tango…one step forward, two steps back. Cyprus is a small island in the Mediterranean with a population of less than a million people. Yet it has a fascinating history, and present for that matter: it is […]
La Notte (1961)
November 9, 2013
By William Repass. “Whenever I try to communicate, love disappears.” When finally—after what seems like an ice age of anticipation—you receive your package in the mail, strip away the bubble-wrap with trembling fingers to reveal Criterion’s sleek new La Notte box-set (complete with blu-ray digital restoration, bonus interviews, and a […]
1970s Rape-Revenge Films and their Remakes: Changing Representations
November 8, 2013
By Victoria Tickle. Rape-revenge films are a controversial sub-genre of films that have been the subject of many critical debates surrounding feminism, moral issues and ethics, as well as the representations of women, violence and gender roles. Rape-revenge films are often categorised as a sub-genre of other larger and more […]
Not so Innocent: The lasting influence of a ghostly classic!
November 7, 2013
By Cleaver Patterson. As the dark nights draw in and Christmas approaches, what better than to settle down and enjoy a good, old fashioned ghost story. It seems appropriate then that, as part of their Gothic season, the BFI has chosen to screen a classic chiller whose initial release was […]
Inside Llewyn Davis: An Austin Film Festival Review
November 5, 2013
By Jacob Mertens. The folk singer sits at the fore of a small crowd in the Gaslight Cafe. The lights hang dim around him, pale concrete at his feet—more a somber tomb than a stage. He sings a strained ballad, voice raw and clear and imperfect but beautiful still. He […]
The Cognitive Bias Towards Pattern Seeking and the Festival Experience: The Ninth Annual Zurich Film Festival
November 2, 2013
By Davide Caputo. After a five-year absence, this year I returned to the Zurich Film Festival to find that the predictions I made regarding its potential in my previous review for FilmInt (6.1, 2008) had been exceeded. The festival now takes over far more of the city, expanding well beyond […]
The Archaeology of Abjection in The Exorcist
October 31, 2013
By Will Dodson. Warner Home Video released a new Blu-ray set of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist on October 8, coinciding with the film’s 40th anniversary. The occasion warrants, I think, a brief revisiting. The set repackages an earlier Blu-ray edition with some new, inconsequential documentary features. Like the earlier release, […]
Captain Phillips (2013)
October 29, 2013
By Jacob Mertens. A few months ago I was listening to NPR’s This American Life podcast, and I caught an episode that was devoted entirely to a hostage situation in Egypt’s Sinai desert. The story involved journalist Meron Estefanos stumbling onto a den of hostages all seeking rescue, unable to […]
Light From the Screen: Cinema, Painting and Spectatorship
October 29, 2013
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Noël Coward once observed that “television is for appearing on – not for looking at,” but as the twenty-first century takes firm hold of our collective consciousness, it seems that everyone has become, in one form or another, a spectator of the events of everyday existence, […]