By Mark James. Celebrating its sixth year of bringing some of the best contemporary French film to the Bay Area, this year’s French Cinema Now lineup features the latest from famous directors along with some fine examples of the new — succinctly capturing a snap shot of the year’s most […]
Behind Enemy Lines: An Interview with Frankenstein’s Army Director Richard Raaphorst and Star Alexander Mercury
October 12, 2013
By Cleaver Patterson. This summer the groundbreaking horror film Frankenstien’s Army took Film4 FrightFest by storm, and is now set to do the same on a wider scale with its release on DVD. The film’s Dutch director Richard Raaphorst and its Russian star Alexander Mercury recently explained to Cleaver Patterson […]
Blue Caprice
October 12, 2013
By Christopher Sharrett. The advertisements for this film by Alexandre Moors contain the blurb “based on the true story of the DC snipers.” One would think that the claim of “true story” would have run its course (at least for those seriously interested in the medium) in film advertising decades […]
A Complicated Story: A San Francisco Film Society Hong Kong Cinema Review
October 11, 2013
By Janine Gericke. I was surprised to learn that A Complicated Story was made as a student film by first-time filmmaker Kiwi Chow, with executive production through the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts’ film production program and the legends Johnnie To and Bill Kong. Not a bad way to kick […]
To Be or Not to Be (1942)
October 9, 2013
By William Repass. “I know that I look like Hitler, and I’m gonna prove it right now!” Since any discussion of German-American director Ernst Lubitsch must devolve, sooner or later, into a feeble attempt at pinning down the so-called “Lubitsch Touch,” let us resign ourselves the inevitable, and see if […]
The Unbearable Lightness of Gravity; The Depth and Resonance of Adore
October 6, 2013
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. I’m always in a bad mood after I see a bad movie, especially when I have hopes that the film will be an altogether different experience. Such was the case today with Gravity (2013), the latest feature from director Alfonso Cuarón, which has been playing to […]
European Civil War Films: Memory, Conflict, and Nostalgia (Eleftheria Rania Kosmidou, 2013)
October 5, 2013
A Book Review by Budd Wilkins. ‘In his essay on “Screen Memories,” [Freud] argued that troubling or traumatic memories tend to find expression through highly distorted symbolic forms’ (3). This one line perfectly encapsulates the core idea explored throughout European Civil War Films. A nation suffers a kind of trauma […]
The New York Film Festival, September 27th – October 13th 2013
October 3, 2013
By Gary M. Kramer. The 51st New York Film Festival opens September 27 with the World Premiere screening of Paul Greengrass’ dramatic thriller, Captain Phillips and closes three weeks later with the World Premiere of Spike Jonze’s Her. In between, there are Gala Tributes (Cate Blanchett, Ralph Fiennes), Views from […]
San Francisco Film Society Fall Season: Hong Kong Cinema | October 4-6, 2013
October 2, 2013
By Janine Gericke. From Johnnie To’s new crime flick to some kickass kung fu, the third annual San Francisco Film Society’s Hong Kong Cinema festival is set to delight audiences with this year’s lineup. Flora Lau’s Bends (2013, Cantonese with subtitles), which debuted at Cannes, opens the festival. The film […]
You and the Night (2013)
October 1, 2013
By Mark James. You can tell that Yann Gonzalez’s film, You and the Night (Rencontres d’après minuit, better translated as Encounters after Midnight) is a fantasy because of its central set-up: an orgy in which the participants reveal their emotional pasts. The cinematic possibilities of strangers meeting up for sex […]