By James Slaymaker. Decision to Leave builds a sense of tragic weight more potent than anything else in Chan-wook’s oeuvre.” Park Chan-wook’s new film, Decision to Leave, may appear at first glance to be an uncharacteristically straight police procedural drama. Its set-up is pure pulp: Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) is a […]
Global Change and Local Protest in Thailand: An Interview with Sorayos Prapapan on Arnold is the Model Student (2022)
By Yun-hua Chen. After Covid, young generation started to think in a totally different way. That’s why the Bad Students movement came into being…. Young people don’t shut up anymore. They know that this country has a problem, and they are not indifferent.” The Thai filmmaker Sorayos Prapapan has an […]
‘I play with what I have’: An Interview with Juliette Binoche
By Ali Moosavi. I love what I do. It’s not being an actress… it’s being in the moment of work.” If I had to pick half a dozen of cinema’s greatest actresses working today, then Juliette Binoche would undoubtedly be among them. She is just an amazing actress and a […]
A Quality Melodramatic Framework: The Americans (FX, 2013-2018) by Linda Mizejewski
By Ken Hall. A key to the innovative nature of this series, according to Mizejewski, is its presentation of espionage thriller elements within ‘domestic melodrama.’” The compelling television series The Americans (FX, 2013-18) is presented as a landmark example of “quality” television production in this fine study. In her new […]
Archival Detective Work – Three Minutes: A Lengthening
By Elias Savada. Not your conventional Holocaust documentary…. Fragments get incessantly replayed, slowed down, reversed, enlarged, and otherwise altered to sniff out clues and provide context, sometimes agonizingly so.” This genealogical gumshoe of a documentary starts with three-plus minutes of silent home movie footage, accompanied only by the sound of […]
“Everything is political”: An Interview with Costa-Gavras
By Yun-hua Chen. Thriller is a way to tell a story about society. Political thrillers are movies about people in a particular situation…. Everything is political.” To celebrate the Greek-French auteur Costa-Gavras’ nearly 60 years of filmmaking, the Locarno Film Festival awarded him with the lifetime achievement award of 2022 […]
Far from These Shores: Guy Maddin’s Tales from the Gimli Hospital (Redux)(1988)
By Thomas M. Puhr. This 64-minute fever dream exudes a confidence and singularity of vision rarely seen in debuts.” Angels float in an ink black sky. The camera descends from these heavens, past wispy clouds, and settles at street level, where a spotlight shines on the entrance sign to Gimli […]
A Truth Universally Acknowledged: Mr. Malcom’s List (Emma Holly Jones, 2022)
By Theresa Rodewald. Not every film has to reinvent the formula and for some viewers, Mr. Malcom’s List, with its delightful performances, will be the perfect film for a rainy day or a cozy movie night with friends. Those viewers looking for a more daring approach to the period drama […]
Sacheen Littlefeather, American Hero
By Gary D. Rhodes. Some on planet earth were ready to hear Littlefeather. Too many in Hollywood were not, alas, thus tarnishing the tinsel in Tinseltown.” Sacheen Littlefeather, the civil rights activist and actor booed by many attendees at the 1973 Academy Awards, has passed away at the age of 75. […]
A Little Lynch for Fletch: An Interview with Kyle MacLachlan
By Ali Moosavi. I think with movies sometimes whether the movie is good or bad isn’t necessarily the criteria anymore. It becomes about do you want to spend time in the world of that movie.” Kyle MacLachlan’s name will forever be associated with the role of agent Dale Cooper and […]