By Gary M. Kramer. The 1959 classic drama, Room at the Top, based on John Braine’s “angry young man” novel, has just been released on DVD by Kino Lorber in a 2K Restoration Special Edition. The film was a sensation at the time of its initial release for its frank […]
More Than You Can Bear: The Cloud-Capped Star (Criterion Collection)
Jeremy Carr
January 23, 2020
By Jeremy Carr. When Montu (Dwiju Bhawal), the youngest of four children in a Bengalese family, returns home after having been injured at work, a neighbor attempts to reassure the beleaguered household by asserting, “God doesn’t give you more than you can bear.” Whatever the truth to this claim, the […]
Post-Soviet Descent into Capitalist Chaos: Alex Gibney’s Citizen K
Michael Sandlin
January 17, 2020
By Michael Sandlin. After narrowly avoiding being nicked by the UK authorities for supposed “document theft” during the filming of his Troubles documentary No Stone Unturned, Alex Gibney is back tear-assing around the world with his camera crew making controversial films. In his latest, Citizen K, his subject is someone […]
Babenco’s Swansong: My Hindu Friend
Ali Moosavi
January 17, 2020
By Ali Moosavi. Death has been a popular theme for filmmakers to explore almost ever since cinema was invented. Some of the films dealing with mortality have contained some autobiographical elements. In Blue (1993) director Derek Jarman, as he was close to death from AIDS complications, made a cinematic diary […]
A Very English Cinema – Britpop Cinema: From Trainspotting to This is England by Matt Glasby
Thomas Puhr
January 14, 2020
A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. Hear the term “Britpop,” and the usual musical suspects come to mind: Blur, Oasis, Suede, and the like. Less obvious is the movement’s cinematic corollary, explored in Matt Glasby’s Britpop Cinema: From Trainspotting to This is England (Intellect, 2019). Much like the music with […]
Empathetic and Unblinking: The Painted Bird
Yun-hua Chen
January 14, 2020
By Yun-hua Chen. Seldom can film-viewing be such a devastating experience. Having competed in the category of main competition at the Venice Film Festival and being handpicked by Around the World in 14 Films, the Berlin festival of festivals, it is a film experience of three hours which deeply challenges […]
Marion Davies: Gifted Actress and Impossible Boy
Thomas Gladysz
December 23, 2019
By Thomas Gladysz. I rejoice in this opportunity to record something which today is all but forgotten except for those lucky enough to have seen a few of her pictures: Marion Davies was one of the most delightfully accomplished comediennes in the whole history of the screen. She would have […]
Making and Taking: Overseas
Yun-hua Chen
December 23, 2019
By Yun-hua Chen. After a very personal debut Full of Missing Links (2012) about her journey back to South Korea in search of her father and the experience of separation on a larger scale in the country, the Korea-born and Brussels-based director Yoon Sung-a’s second documentary Overseas, a Belgian-French coproduction, […]
“All Archives Create Futures” – Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
December 19, 2019
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. There’s a moment in Matt Wolf’s documentary Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project where the enormous value of the VHS archival project of the film’s title spirals is captured in its purest essence. The screen is divided into four frames, live television broadcasts recorded off television on 11 […]
To Know Them Doesn’t Mean You Love Them: Bombshell
Elias Savada
December 19, 2019
By Elias Savada. The stars are blondly aligned: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, as three of the many victims of the “real scandal” at Fox News on which Charles Randolph’s screenplay is based. John Lithgow goes on the broadside as Roger Ailes, the ugly sleaze of a human for […]