By Anees Aref. “A charming and elegantly crafted story about romantic longing, companionship, and the surprising places people find it.” Whether as a dramatic or metaphorical tool, the train can function in various ways to explore the inner and outer dramas of both character and plot, emotional and physical spaces. […]
Nostalgia Rides the Rails: Alex Nevill’s Ferroequinology
By Elias Savada. Ferroequinology is a pleasant ebb and flo road movie about wandering souls. Laconic, lyrical, observatory, and part soft-spoken public service announcement.” At just 66 minutes, Ferroequinology is a short-haul documentary about a big ass word (the study of the iron horse, i.e., locomotives, but the film is […]
TV Divas and Armani Archfiends: Amanda Kramer on Give Me Pity! (IFFR 2022)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Give Me Pity! is a natural progression to the previous work because it pushes the idea of artificial space further. We’re located on a stage meant to look and feel like a stage. The film is about a consummate performer performing a performance.” Sissy St. Claire is a […]
A Neo-Noir Obsession: An Interview with Paul Solet on Clean
By Yun-hua Chen. Obsession in general is something that’s a sort of a bottomless wealth for me to draw on. I identify with that sort of [neo-noir] obsession about my own work, so it’s easy to tap into that personally.” The second collaboration between Paul Solet and Adrien Brody after […]
Rose-Tinted Glasses – The Beatles: Get Back
By Christopher Sharrett. Peter Jackson’s new documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, culled from fifty hours of film left over from the 1970 film Let It Be…tends to make [their breakup] rosier than it was, with the band in a mostly kindly mood but for a couple of nasty scrapes.” The […]
Break It Down – New Approaches to Contemporary Adaptation
A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. Fortunately, editor Betty Kaklamanidou’s collection sifts through these multimodal weeds and offers some new models for interpretation.” If you play a quick game of word association and ask someone what comes to mind when they hear about a film “adaptation,” you’ll likely get something […]
A Globalized Supply Chain: Sean Wang’s A Marble Travelogue
By Yun-hua Chen. Sean Wang, with his unique sensitivity, sharp observation, and a somewhat dry sense of humor, reveals just how surrealist the supply chain system under globalization can be.” A Marble Travelogue, a coproduction of China, France, Greece, and the Netherlands, premiered at the IDFA Frontlight in 2021. It […]
Things Get Ugly with The 355
By Elias Savada. The top-notch female cast isn’t provided a decent blueprint to develop out of the provided stereotypes. The James Bond—Mission: Impossible spin that the actors try to emulate never takes full flight.” Universal Pictures’ The 355, a shiny production of a fairly dull film, is being pushed as […]
The Future of Preservation: ASN Roadshow Edition 2
By Elias Savada. The Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) has supported a wide variety of members from around the globe: ‘archivists, librarians, collectors, curators, students, educators, artists, technologists, researchers, distributors, exhibitors, service providers, consultants, and advocates,’ according to its website.” Yeah, you’re asking yourself, what the F is ASN […]
Delayed Gratification – ReFocus: The Films of Albert Brooks
A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. A much-needed overview not just of the filmmaker, but of his enduring cultural impact.” Read any critical piece on Albert Brooks and you’ll invariably encounter descriptors like “underappreciated” or “overlooked.” But what is meant, exactly, by such labels? After all, two of his films […]