By Bryan Nixon. A while back, the Criterion Collection revamped and re-released Akira Kurosawa’s samurai classic Yojimbo. One of the most influential films of all time, Yojimbo, which translates as ‘the bodyguard’, features a protagonist who stands firmly as the blueprint for the quintessential cinematic badass. Played brilliantly by Toshiro […]
Romain Goupil and Hands in the Air: Love, Love, Bombs, Love
By Daniel Lindvall. Hands in the Air (Les mains en l’air), written and directed by Romain Goupil, was first shown at Cannes in 2010, but is only now tentatively finding its way onto screens beyond France. Goupil is, I would say, relatively little known outside of his French homeland and […]
A Nation Ripe for Thatcher: Radio On (UK, 1979)
By Tom von Logue Newth. When it appeared in 1979, Radio On seemed to have few precedents in British cinema. An independent black and white feature, artfully photographed, with minimal narrative or plot, and a thematically-integrated soundtrack of electronic krautrock and new wave ‘hits’, it was the first film by […]
Special Effects and Moving Pictures: From Jason and the Argonauts to Argonautica
By Matthew Gumpert. “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” (Roger “Verbal” Kint, The Usual Suspects [1995]) The Oz Effect The 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts (directed by Don Chaffey), a Hollywood version of the Hellenistic epic, […]
The Joke’s on Who? Exit Through the Gift Shop
By Daniel Lindvall. ‘You could stick all my shit in Tate Modern and have an opening with Tony Blair and Kate Moss on roller blades handing out vol-au-vents and it wouldn’t be as exciting as it is when you go out and paint something big where you shouldn’t do.’ […]
Bond and Bourne: The Role of the Individual within the Conservative Influence of Spy Films
March 16, 2011
By Jacob Mertens, Honorable Mention in the 2010 Frank Capra Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Film Criticism. There was a moment in my life when movies became an obsession. When I was much younger, I watched films with a casual interest. I felt the same indiscriminate, escapist rush from plunging […]
Gaddafi is YOU!
By Rajko Radovic. Here comes the bad guy. CNN is in the house, a sure signal that something bad is about to go down. Hidden behind designer sunglasses, the self-proclaimed father of the revolution scans an invisible horizon even when he is in a beach front restaurant surrounded by bodyguards. […]
Raising the Spectre of Hope: Savage (Sweden, 2011)
By Daniel Lindvall. It is frequently said that respect is something you have to earn. Proffered as a life-rule this is an unusually stupid thing to say. On the contrary, respect is something we’re morally entitled to from the moment we’re born. Savage (jointly written and directed by Martin Jern […]
Stockholm Film Fest Spotlights ‘Extreme Politics’
By Daniel Lindvall ‘We think the price is worth it’, answered Madeleine Albright, then US Ambassador to the United Nations, when asked on 60 Minutes in 1996 whether she could justify half a million children dying as the result of the sanctions regime against Iraq. But despite embracing genocide as […]
‘Planetary Humanism’ Calling: new sightings of ‘black’ bodies in epic films
By Saër Maty Bâ. INTRODUCTION If ‘race’ is dead, the circumstances of its passing must be examined, its funeral organised and – without assumption, endorsement or dismissal – new critical, post-racial processes triggered and affected. Why is ‘post-race’ still an imprecise discourse? Could end-of-‘race’ be a tool for reading (racial) […]