By Melanie Marotta. Ever since I was sixteen or seventeen, I’d – I’d get what is sometimes called creepy ideas.” (05:19-05:25) With Loving Highsmith (2022), writer and director Eva Vitija does what others have refused to do – she resists labeling Highsmith. Instead, by allowing her life to unfold, viewers […]
Navigating History and Audience: An Interview with Ari Folman on Where is Anne Frank (2021)
By Yun-hua Chen. The biggest challenge was how to portray the last seven months of Anne Frank’s life into images that can be accessible to children without going graphically too deep in terms of what really happened. This is how I found the solution through a lot of parallel visual […]
Triggered: The Post-Traumatic Woman and Narratology in HBO’s Westworld
By Keith Clavin and Christopher La Casse. As the show develops, we come to learn that some of the hosts are not ‘forgetting’ the traumas inflicted upon them…. Despite a wipe of their memory caches regarding prior ‘narratives’ (earlier roles they played in the park’s performances), they seem to be […]
A Grim War Tale: Burial
By Elias Savada. Despite the director’s limited ability to handle low-budget action in his debut feature, his much more accomplished follow-up shows he still needs to work with better, less-confusing script material.” British filmmaker Ben Parker only has two features under his belt: The Chamber from 2017 and Burial, now […]
Bloody Family Reunion: Vincent Grashaw’s What Josiah Saw (2021)
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 […]