By Anees Aref. The germination of the idea comes from the house [on location]…. It’s also my hometown, that village, and I’d been photographing that landscape for the last five, six years. I think [the film] came from the photography that I was doing of that landscape across different seasons. […]
From Burundi with Cyberpunk: Neptune Frost
By Elias Savada. A vibrant celebration of homegrown culture set against an African dreamscape tinged with Marxist underpinnings.” Thou Shalt Not Exploit Technology might be one of the newer commandments to be considered after inputting this new, unconventional avantgarde piece, a self-proclaimed cyberpunk musical filmed in Burundi. It played at […]
Desperate Times, Desperate Measures: Fernando Ayala’s The Bitter Stems (Los tallos amargos, 1956)
By Jeremy Carr. The imagery of Los tallos amargos is not only its most strikingly noirish attribute, but it’s among the more dazzling of any film, of any genre.” A cursory survey of film history would seem to suggest that Hollywood had cornered the market on the best of what […]
The Real Genius: What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? by Joseph McBride
By Tony Williams. Despite McBride’s fortune in having a closer involvement with Welles than most critics, this book is never reverential. Instead, it presents a balanced and complex picture of an extremely talented but difficult personality whose personal flaws are less important than what he attempted to achieve.” What Ever […]
Marion Davies’ Slow-Burn Revival: Zander the Great (1925) and Beverly of Graustark (1926)
By Thomas Gladysz. Davies was at her delightful best in comedies with a contemporary setting…. Nevertheless, her earlier costumes dramas and period pieces, like Zander the Great and Beverly of Graustark as well as the 2019 Undercrank release, Little Old New York, still have considerable charm.” The inherent contradiction in […]
Still Cruisin’ After All These Years – Top Gun: Maverick
By Elias Savada. Old fashioned fun.” Seemingly frozen in chivalrous time, the ever-youthful 59-year-old Tom Cruise is back in fine form 35-plus years after he scored big box office bucks with the original Top Gun. History should repeat itself for this long overdue sequel (with an additional two years tacked […]
On the Edge: Keoni Waxman on The Ravine
By Ken Hall. They would answer his questions but they couldn’t answer why.” The Ravine, “a combination of noir, suspense, and spiritual and fantastic elements,” as I described in my review of the film for Retreats from Oblivion, uses these elements to avoid becoming “an ordinary inspirational piece.” I caught […]
Unpredictable Moments: An Interview with Bijaya Jena on Abhaas (1997)
By Anees Aref. We all are sometimes weak and sometimes strong. I wanted to express how a moment of weakness can shatter your life.” Written and directed by Bijaya Jena, Abhaas (1997) has recently been restored after an initially challenging run finding distribution upon its first release. Set in 1950s […]
Beautiful Decay: Dwein Ruedas Baltazar’s Ode to Nothing (Kani Releasing)
By Thomas Puhr. It has non-diegetic music, a considerable amount of dialogue, some fairly complex camera movements, and even a few quick editing cuts. So why does my mind keep returning to that word: quiet? The less you know about Dwein Ruedas Baltazar’s Ode to Nothing (2018) going into it, […]
Norse Mythology, Repackaged: Ragnarok (Netflix, 2020- )
By Kenneth E. Hall. While not presuming a knowledge of Norse mythology, for those viewers already more versed in Norse myth the series offers a fresh approach to the corpus surrounding the apocalyptic event known as Ragnarok, employing a mix of magical realist and more traditionally fantastic techniques to unfold […]