Paydirt feels more like fast food than haute cuisine.” By Ali Moosavi. Christian Sesma, the writer-director of Paydirt, has certainly an interesting resume. Already a successful restaurateur from Palm Springs, he also made “HBO’s first under-a-million-dollar action film acquired in over a decade.” The resume also informs us he has made a […]
A Visual Stylist’s Potboiler: Brian De Palma and Susan Lehman’s Are Snakes Necessary?
A Book Review by Ali Moosavi. My guess is that co-writer Lehman would have been at ease with sections dealing with the press and politics, while the sex and murder are products of De Palma’s imagination.” At the ripe old age of 79, that best known disciple of Hitchcock, Brian […]
Siberia and the Ascension of Abel Ferrara
Ferrara is determinedly consistent in his devotion to his core visions, and as hungry as ever to discover new ways to express them.” By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. At some point over the last decade, my initially half-jokingly insistence that Abel Ferrara had become the thinking person’s Lars Von Trier became less […]
Art as Life Practice: Alejandro Jodorowsky on Psychomagic: A Healing Art
[Psychomagic] is an art, not a science. I make all the art.” By Gary M. Kramer. Chilean cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky has always been a cine-magician. He made his feature debut with the surrealistic Fando and Lis (1968) and then achieved worldwide attention for his cult films, El Topo (1970) […]
Now, More Than Ever: The Fight
By Elias Savada. Though filmed pre-pandemic, there is a shared sense of heroics here, be they legal or medical professions engaging an overwhelming enemy.” For most of you, The Fight starts off with a gag reflex – the swearing in of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United […]
Debuting with the Visceral: Nick Rowland’s The Shadow of Violence
By Ali Moosavi. Rowland and his cinematographer Piers McGrail provide some respite from the claustrophobic and washed-out colour scenes of violence….” It is something of a dichotomy that such a beautiful, picturesque country as Ireland has been the setting for so many films with themes of violence, war, revolution and […]
A Passionless Pageant: Bruno Dumont’s Joan of Arc (2019)
By Jeremy Carr. A film more arduous and cumbersome than it is deferential and imaginative.” Aside from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 paragon, The Passion of Joan of Arc, the story of the revered “Maid of Orléans” has been told dozens of times by some of cinema’s most celebrated filmmakers, from […]
Portrait of a Singular Artist – Chantal Akerman Retrospective Handbook by Joanna Hogg and Adam Roberts
A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. If the likes of Kubrick or Bergman have more or less been deified, surely she belongs in this secular pantheon.” If, like me, The Criterion Collection and Eclipse Series – through their pristine releases of Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), […]
Wuxia Majesty: King Hu’s The Fate of Lee Khan (Eureka Masters of Cinema)
By Tony Williams. Hu recognizes that victory is not just the end but also rather another tedious part of a successive number of moves leading to the same circular pattern.” King Hu’s “Inn Trilogy” began with Come Drink with Me (1966), shot in Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers’ studio, and continued […]
Sugary Serial: Dwight H. Little’s Bloodstone (Arrow Video)
1988’s Bloodstone comes off as pleasingly old-fashioned – fleeting side-boob excepted.” By Rod Lott. After 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark rolled over the competition and into the stratosphere of pop-culture consciousness, dozens of rip-offs followed. Some were imitations; others, parodies – and as far as I know, only Brett Stimely starred […]