By Elias Savada. There is plenty of dark humor to be found in this Israeli-American hybrid from Haifa-born and Los Angeles-based director Michael Mayer…[a] horror excursion into impolite Los Angeles manners….” Don’t let the title fool you. What looks like happiness on the surface ain’t what’s underneath. Nowhere. No how. […]
Trzebinia, the Small Town: Tomasz Jurkiewicz’s Everyone Has a Summer (Każdy ma swoje lato)
By Alex Ramon. This modest small-town-set charmer, the debut fiction feature of its director, operates with a stealth subversiveness that proves all the more refreshing.” The biggest splashes in Polish cinema over the turbulent past twelve months have been made by two films: Mariusz Wilczyński’s Berlinale success Kill It and […]
Expanding the Dialog on National Cinemas: an Interview with MK Raghavendra
Zibahkhana (Hell’s Ground, Pakistan, 2007) By Devapriya Sanyal. MK Raghavendra, a film critic and leading scholar of Indian cinema, has authored eight books with leading publishers to date. He offers fresh and invaluable insights into the world of Indian cinema not only restricted to studies of Hindi or Bollywood (as […]
An Artist in a Land Divided: Arman Nshanian’s Songs of Solomon
By Ali Moosavi. A praiseworthy debut feature for Armenian director Arman Nshanian.” Songs of Solomon, which is Armenia’s entry for this year’s Foreign Language Oscars, uses the life of the Armenian composer known as Komitas to cover an era of history which includes the Hamidian Massacres of Armenians by the […]
Poetic Cinema: King Hu’s Legend of the Mountain (1979)
By Tony Williams. One in which alert perception and transcendent pleasure in the images offer viewers entry into a new type of cinematic experience.” Shot back-to-back in South Korea with Raining in the Mountain, similar to the earlier complementary productions of The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) and The Valiant […]
A Trance in Monochrome: Simon Lavoie’s No Trace
By Yun-hua Chen. Probing deep into the possibilities of filmmaking, Simon Lavoie invites his audience into a trance-like journey….” Slamdance Film Festival, the premiere festival with the mission of “by filmmakers, for filmmakers”, is unique in terms of its democratic programming and precise policy to support independent filmmaking; it focuses […]
Facing It Head-On – Criminalization/Assimilation: Chinese/Americans and Chinatowns in Classical Hollywood Film
Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young in The Hatchet Man (1932) A Book Review Essay by Matthew Sorrento. Author Philippa Gates doesn’t excuse or shy away from the racist stereotyping of the Chinese but pinpoints issues of complexity.” Though this ambitious study doesn’t mention the issue by name, Philippa Gates’ […]
Deceptive Simplicity: John Crye on Chance
By Robin Gregory. I cannot grow as a human being if I do not observe and explore and attempt to explain my own life to myself, to understand my own patterns of behavior. I think the same can be said of humanity at large.” We’ve been warned by Hollywood bigwigs […]
Intimate, Disappearing Environments: The Philadelphia Environmental Film Festival 2020
Honeyland By T.R. Merchant-Knudsen. From the carefully curated selection of films and grouped programs… there were a variety of options for viewers, from talks with directors and conservationists, shorts that highlighted issues from around the globe, and feature films at the edge of documentary filmmaking. At the beginning of 2020 […]
Welcome to Full MAGA Cardiac Arrest: Cactus Jack
By Elias Savada. The combination of hallucinogenic talk radio sketches and Taxi Driver‘s Travis Bickle on steroids affords actor R. Michael Gull to follow the filmmakers’ urgings: ‘Let’s just make some shit in our basement … and show hate like it really is.’” I’m still trying to wrap my head […]