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,” […]
An Australian New Wave Craftsman: Phillip Noyce on Fast Charlie
By Ali Moosavi. Having played Bond gave him that background; this coming from a past life in a way. I just think we needed someone who was virile, aggressive, and yet not young.” Phillip Noyce’s name has been synonymous with successful big budget Hollywood action films such as Patriot Games, […]
Say Goodbye to Hollywood: John Schlesinger’s The Day of the Locust (1975)
By Jeremy Carr. There has never been a self-referential Hollywood feature quite like 1975’s The Day of the Locust, a twisting and twisted tale of sullied lives, desperation, and, ultimately, sheer madness.” Hollywood has always been rather good at building itself up, generating films that flaunt the glamour of Tinseltown, […]
Cinematic Healing: Fallen Leaves (Kuolleet lehdet)
By Jonathan Monovich. Fallen Leaves implies that cinema, and the love that it fosters, saves lives.” In Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly (1961), it is said that when the thought of love and God being the same is made “suddenly the emptiness turns into abundance, and despair into life. […]
Florid in a Good Way: Herbert Brenon’s The Spanish Dancer (1923)
By Thomas Gladysz. With a range of pictures to his credit – fantasies, adventure films, melodramas, historical epics – there are those who feel Brenon was a director without a defined, or at least a dynamic, style. There is truth to that assertion…. Adaptability, however, shouldn’t detract from an appreciation […]