By Ali Moosavi. Careless Crime is an unsettling and dazzling achievement, using a real-life crime at the onset of the Iranian Revolution to examine cinema and its relation to reality versus illusion.” With only four feature films under his belt, the Iranian director Shahram Mokri has established himself as a […]
“Sweetheart” Strikes Back: An Interview with Roseanne Liang on Shadow in the Cloud (TIFF 2020)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Even though it’s set during a world war, it’s not a ‘lest we forget movie’, it’s not a past based thing. It’s a movie that is about the now….this dehumanization is universal.” – Roseanne Liang With its world premiere at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, Chinese-New […]
The Anti Rape-Revenge Film: Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli on Violation (TIFF 2020)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. There is something super cathartic about the idea of revenge, and what we recognised when first making the film is that really we’re making an anti revenge film. It’s like the film is designed to scare you not to seek revenge because of how it’s going to […]
TIFF 2020: Short Cuts
By Gary M. Kramer. The Short Cuts programs, a staple of the Toronto International Film Festival, showcases five programs of new work by established and up and coming filmmakers. Each program has a loose theme and offers a mix of narrative, animated, and documentary shorts. Here is a rundown of […]
The Vacant Intimacy of One Hour Outcall
By Zoe Kurland. The line is always blurry between niceties and exploitation…. Though deeper exploration of themes of class, race, sex work, or, perhaps most importantly, the personas we craft to gain power, are sidelined in favor of frenetic editing.” T. Arthur Cottam’s One Hour Outcall begins with a smattering […]
Film Scratches: September 2020
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. Recipe for the Imagination: Frozen (2019) Frozen is an experimental short by Adonia Bouchehri, a young London-based artist. Fascinating and wise, […]
She Said, He Said, He Said – Who Cares?: Yuval Adler’s The Secrets We Keep
By Elias Savada. Rapace is out for blood here, but Chris Messina is mostly a nebbish this go-round.” But the end of its tedious 97 minutes, I felt screwed while the cozy God Bless America town at the center of The Secrets We Keep celebrated July 4th, with one family […]
Guilty by Association – The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Criterion Collection)
By Jeremy Carr. Even if it’s not a true story, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – both Heinrich Böll’s 1974 novel and the 1975 film adaptation written and directed by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta – can only be, according to Schlöndorff, “understood out of the period.” This […]
Textbook in Disguise – The Psychology of Moviegoing by Ashton D. Trice and Hunter W. Greer
Life is Beautiful (1997) A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. Despite their accessible, often humorous prose, the authors never quite escape the constraints of the dreaded undergraduate textbook.” Why do some viewers flock to the latest gorefest horror movie, while others wouldn’t go if you paid them? What exactly happens […]
The Ruins of Love: Natalie Krinsky’s The Broken Hearts Gallery
By Zoe Kurland. This emotional hoarder’s life works a bit like an Urban Outfitters version of the Christopher Nolan film Memento: each bizarre object reminds Lucy of an important moment in her life, which in turn, informs her sense of self.” In 2012, Taylor Swift released her fourth studio album, […]