By Jeremy Carr. All involved on this set from Arrow Video make a strong case for how remarkably varied and complex these movies were, from the economic, political, and social conditions of their making to the thrilling end results.” If the casual moviegoer is even remotely aware of the Shaw […]
Of Matriarchs and Magic: Kate Dolan on You Are Not My Mother
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. I hate the use of “strong” as a constant descriptor for female characters, it feels so one-dimensional…. I just took inspiration from all the women I’ve known in my life and they can be strong, but also weak, they can be stubborn but also thoughtful.” It’s Samhain […]
Trick and Treat: The Outfit Shines Brightly
By Elias Savada. Yes, there’s a theatrical cadence in the clever dialogue, but it’s such a highly original, suspenseful piece that it works magic as the characters move about their set.” Leonard Burling is a quiet, sad-eyed, precise, and observant man – an old-school, Savile Row cutter by trade, with […]
Embracing Multiplicity: Pushpendra Singh’s The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs (Laila Aur Satt Geet)
By Varsha Ramachandran. The pace, while slow, is steady, ensuring reflection without boredom, something to which the beautiful frames, colour combinations, and lilting score also contribute.” Director Pushpendra Singh’s second film adapting Rajasthani writer Vidaydan Detha’s works, The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs, which premiered at the 70th annual Berlinale, […]
Hard Times – Big Bad John: The John Milius Interviews
A Book Review by Matthew Sorrento. Oh, what can you do with a man like that?” John Cheever, “Goodbye My Brother” And what can we do with John Milius, a writer-director so stubbornly Right-wing in his views: do we urge viewers adamantly to embrace or to resist him? He’s undoubtedly […]
Worlds of Tiny Pain: On Laura Wandel’s Playground and Jay Rosenblatt’s When We Were Bullies
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Rosenblatt’s documentary is a frank self-assessment that resituates an otherwise easily forgotten misstep of youth in the context of the knowledge and experience of adulthood…. [while] When We Were Bullies strips away the soft surfaces of nostalgia to remind us with a near visceral intensity of the […]
Environmental Factors: An Interview with Filmmaker John Andreas Andersen on The Burning Sea
By Anees Aref. I wanted the environments to feel real and the people to feel real. As a director it’s a chance to take, because the audience is so used to seeing there has to be a bad guy, to create the classic conflict there has to be some idiot. […]
A “Spiritual Comedy”: An Interview with Jöns Jönsson on Axiom (Berlinale 2022)
By Yun-hua Chen. It’s always very hard to put these labels on films. It’s easier to come up with new labels that didn’t exist before, and that is why I call the film a spiritual comedy. There is humor in it. There are absurd and funny situations. And adding thriller? […]
Big, Bold, Brazen: The Batman
By Elias Savada. For those of you who wondered if another reboot could find itself an audience after Christopher Nolan did such a fine job with his trilogy, please wonder no more….” Nietzsche would have a field-day analyzing the latest reimagining of DC Comics’ masked vigilante. (Bat) Man might not […]
A Creative Hunger: Actor/Writer Kelly Murtagh on Shapeless
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. The tone does feel hard to put into words, I think, because Shapeless is so experiential…. Eating disorders can seduce, seeping in subtly, promising relief. You fall for it, just one time. And then another….” “Lived experience” is increasingly becoming one of those descriptors that overuse is […]