By Thomas M. Puhr. ‘Disrupting the status quo’ through diverse selections…. their documentary choices – including a feel-good athlete biography and a harrowing portrait of religious faith in a maximum security prison – exhibit a similar variety.” Ranging from a comedy-drama about the pitfalls of parenthood to a genre-hopping eco-parable/musical, […]
Small Town, Big Drama: DK and Hugh Welchman’s The Peasants (2023)
By Jenny Paola Ortega Castillo. DK and Hugh Welchman’s film, which recreates frames as oil paintings, is a captivating portrayal of the darker and most unsettling aspects of human nature, such as oppressive patriarchy, small-minded shared beliefs, selfishness, narcissism and jealous behavior within the constraints of a small community.” People […]
Movie Theaters Need to Win Us Back
By Gary D. Rhodes. Movie theaters must do more work to ensure that we are seeing unique content, not films that are already streaming or will be within a few weeks. And this means being clever, because movie theaters can show far more than just movies. (Thank you, Taylor Swift!)” […]
Don’t Look Away: Stephen Gerard Kelly and Garry Keane’s In the Shadow of Beirut (2023)
By Thomas M. Puhr. What emerges is a record of a people that is unwaveringly empathetic in its portrayal but incomplete in terms of either interrogating its position as a historical artifact or providing cultural context.” The poor Lebanese neighborhoods of Sabra and Shatila are the subject of Stephen Gerard […]
Tom DeLonge Wants You to Believe: Monsters of California (2023)
By Jonathan Monovich. Despite its imperfections as an introductory feature film, fans of the sci-fi, horror, and adventure genres will walk away with a smile and will want to believe.” “We all know conspiracies are dumb.” Knowing his extraterrestrial obsessions, it’s a lyric sung ironically by Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge in […]
Teddy Co and the Regional Remapping of Philippine Cinema: An Obituary
By Paul Douglas Grant. Saying goodbye to this luminary figure, we know his legacy endures through the flourishing diversity and dynamism within the Filipino film landscape, in all its vernacular forms.” On November 1, 2023, the Filipino film community faced a profound loss as Teddy Co, a powerful influence on […]
Reflections on the 71st San Sebastian International Film Festival
By Ali Moosavi. This year, the controversy was on a bigger scale….” It seems that the San Sebastian International Film Festival cannot go ahead without having some controversy. Last year it was the inclusion of Austrian director Ulrich Seidl’s Sparta, about a pedophile who travels from Austria to Romania and […]
Pastiche and Performance: Barbara Stanwyck in All I Desire (Douglas Sirk, 1953)
By Catherine Russell. The cinema exalts the role at the same time that it destroys the actor.” —Edgar Morin, The Stars Stanwyck made two films with Douglas Sirk in the 1950s—All I Desire (1953) and There’s Always Tomorrow (1955)—in which she gives two of her finest performances. In both films […]
Not a Creature was Stirring, Not Even a Demon: Jenn Wexler’s The Sacrifice Game (2023)
By Thomas M. Puhr. Maybe I was too harsh toward last year’s Violent Night after all; at least that one seemed to enjoy its own company.” If you saw The Holdovers (2023) and wondered, “What if this were a horror movie, and not good?” then The Sacrifice Game (2023) might be for you. In […]
More “Dead Men and Broken Hearts”: Liminal Noir in Classical World Cinema
A Book Review by Dávid Szőke. While acknowledging the broadening of the debated canon, this volume, edited by Elyce Rae Helford and Christopher Weedman, focuses on how liminality extends beyond physical spaces, emphasizing the fragmented psychological and social realms onscreen after the war.” “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts,” […]