Film Scratches is a blog by David Finkelstein focusing on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. Theory versus Practice: Letters from Vancouver (1973) Canadian filmmaker Kirk Tougas made his film diptych Letters from Vancouver in 1973, and […]
Another Round: Drinking (and Dancing) in the Age of Apocalypse
By Greg Burris. A film that manages to peer beyond the horizon at a time when doing so has become impossible for so many of us.” Films do not often bring me to tears. Even less often do those tears come in the first twenty minutes of the movie. Danish […]
Another Liam Neeson Roadside Distraction: Robert Lorenz’s The Marksman
By Elias Savada. A lackluster affair, sporting cardboard characters and gag-worthy clichés.” Just a few months ago Liam Neeson was fumbling around the generic wasteland of his usual escapist entertainment with Honest Thief. Easily forgotten stuff. He’s back in the same doldrums with a new film, in a new year […]
Beyond the Limits of Documentary Filmmaking – The Construction of Testimony: Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Its Outtakes
A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. This powerful anthology illustrates how the archives are so much more than mere outtakes; they comprise an essential body of historical material, one which must continue to survive for posterity.” With its ten-hour runtime and near universal praise, Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985) is often […]
An Invaluable Guide to “Hollywood East”: Historical Dictionary of Hong Kong Cinema, Second Edition
Once a Thief (1989) A Book Review by Tony Williams. The second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Hong Kong Cinema, by Lisa Odham Stokes and Rachel Braaten, surpasses an earlier 2007 edition edited by one of the key Western scholars in Hong Kong cinema, that contained contributions by Jean […]
A Versatile and Persistent Documentarian: The Films of Barbara Kopple
American Dream (1990) A Book Review by Kate Elora Rogers. The Films of Barbara Kopple offers a thorough dissection of this formative figure in documentary filmmaking, while assessing Kopple’s embrace of other genres and storytelling modes.” The prolific career of filmmaker Barbara Kopple spans the last 45 years and still […]
Guy Maddin Meets SpongeBob: Ryland Brickson Cole Tews’ Lake Michigan Monster (Arrow Video)
By Thomas Puhr. Tews blends green-screen footage, miniature work, practical effects, and a grainy sound design to mimic the look and feel of a ‘50s creature feature (that is, one which has smoked too much pot).” The success of writer-director Ryland Brickson Cole Tews’ (try saying that name five times […]
Chloë Grace Moretz Kicks Ass in Roseanne Liang’s Shadow in the Cloud
By Elias Savada. A small, fierce gem…. Moretz lets it all out with a thrilling performance.” This movie reminds me of the intense, claustrophobic approach to air travel that 7500 did earlier this year. For me, Shadow in the Cloud is a more frantic and enjoyable effort. The action moves […]
History, Criticism, and Splendid Extras: On V. F. Perkins on Movies
Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955) By Jeremy Carr. This deceptively uncomplicated language in fact sustains some of the most profound observations on cinema ever recorded.” Anyone who has read V. F. Perkins’s influential 1972 text Film as Film will find much that is familiar in V. F. Perkins on Movies, […]
From Straight to Hell Comes Jack Ford: Straight Shooting (1917) and Hell Bent (1918)
Straight Shooting By Tony Williams. These two magnificent Blu-ray restorations reproduce the way the films were originally seen and also contain audio-commentaries and video essays by two pioneering Ford scholars: Joseph McBride and Tag Gallagher.” Following on the trail pioneered by the 2016 re-release of John Ford’s Three Bad Men […]