By Thomas Puhr. In short, wildly inconsistent. But at its best, it’s something to behold; more akin to a Southern Gothic short story of the William Faulkner variety than a straight-up horror exercise.” Given its vaguely connected story threads – each of which varies considerably in quality – Vincent Grashaw’s […]
Awkward Love Blossoms in Goodbye, Petrushka
By Elias Savada. Nicola Rose’s first feature displays some grand baby steps towards a brighter future. You just have to accept the weird, brightly-colored yet sparse tableau she has drawn here.” For those of us who like romantic comedies, Goodbye, Petrushka falls amidst the genre’s smaller ones best described as […]
At a Concentration Camp, Two Women in Love: Magnus Gertten on Nelly & Nadine
By N. Buket Cengiz. “It was a mission that felt almost impossible, which is a good thing for a documentary filmmaker.” Once, Nelly Mousset-Vos is a successful classical singer, and Nadine Hwang, the daughter of the Chinese ambassador to Spain, lives in the bohemian circles in Paris. On the Christmas […]
Blood and Guts, with Brains – Stuart Gordon: Interviews
A Book Review by Thomas M. Puhr. It’s hard to think of a genre filmmaker today capable of going so far out on the ledge of bad taste while maintaining an artistic skill that ranks them with the best of the horror masters. In this sense, Stuart Gordon remains one-of-a-kind: […]
Genre-Blending, Gender, and Subversive Views of Sexuality and Mental Health: Perspectives on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
A Book Review by M. Sellers Johnson. An engaging read for both longstanding fans of the show and first-time viewers.” Despite its deceptive title Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (CW, 2015-19) proves to be rather nuanced in its address to this ostensibly negative trope by examining issues of obsession, mental health, plurisexuality, and […]
Between Compliance and Resistance: Mapping the Careers of Wallace Fox and Nipo Strongheart in Early Hollywood
By Andrew H. Fisher. Taken together, their careers allows us to see Hollywood Indians as agents of film history, rather than merely as objects of the cinematic gaze.” During the early decades of the twentieth century, Hollywood seemed to be full of chiefs but not enough Indians. Thanks to the […]
Katabasis and News of the World
By Ken Hall. The journey undertaken by Captain Kidd (Tom Hanks)…through Texas causes him to pass through ‘alien territory’ in a double sense. He is not closely acquainted with some of the locales which he encounters nor with the routes to those locales. Perhaps more important is the underlying strangeness of the […]
Finding That Simple Place: An Interview with Katie Holmes on Directing Alone Together
By Matthew Sorrento. It was important to show the true experience of what happened [during the pandemic], which was New York thriving, it seemed, then, all of the sudden, complete shutdown – just disbelief that something like that can happen so quickly to a city that brings so much joy […]
All A-bored: Bullet Train
By Elias Savada. Style only goes so far in the case of Bullet Train. It can’t make up for all the other problems, especially the leaky script, self-destructing humor, and bland visual effects.” The bland zen-casual jokes that abound in Bullet Train — a boldly-stylized, hyper-exaggerated adaptation of popular Japanese […]
Georgia in Transformation: Ioseb ‘Soso’ Bliadze and Taki Mumladze on A Room of My Own (KVIFF 2022)
By Yun-hua Chen. When we were writing the script, I was thinking that it might be very hard to finance this film. When we applied for some funds, they are more interested in other topics than topics about young people. In Georgia, young people are radically different from their parents […]