By Thomas M. Puhr. At a time when genre film has reached new heights of creativity and daring, audiences deserve so much more from one of the greatest directors….” The story goes that Stanley Kubrick, in the early stages of adapting The Shining, phoned Stephen King one morning to expound […]
Love and Frustration: Joseph McBride on I Loved Movies, But… and the Evolution of Film Education
By Jonathan Monovich. I’ve had good luck in my career by following my own interests/impulses. If you’re an ambulance chaser, you’re not going to be successful.” Born into a large Irish-Catholic family, Joseph McBride was raised by two newspaper reporters. Naturally, McBride followed in his parents’ footsteps to become a […]
The Making of a Silent Legacy: Early Buster Keaton
A Book Review by Thomas Gladysz. A detailed, well-wrought look into the comedian’s early career(s)….” Like Charlie Chaplin, there are more than a handful of books about Buster Keaton – the stone-faced comedian who sported a pork-pie hat. And like Chaplin, Keaton remains one of the truly great performers of […]
The Soul Through a Series of Trials: Bruno Dumont’s Hadewijch (2009)
By Jackson Diianni. A landmark of Dumont’s career, and one of modern history’s most incredible films.” Bruno Dumont’s Hadewijch, released 16 years ago, was, until recently, unavailable to stream in the U.S., but has now become available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV and several other services, where it can hopefully […]
Paint It Black – Darkness Visible: The Cinema of Jonathan Glazer
A Book Review by Thomas M. Puhr. Much more than an overview of a filmography; it’s a thoughtful, at-times poetic consideration of how one of today’s most formally daring auteurs grapples with the darkest corners of the human condition….” Seeing Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin on the big screen remains […]
A Friend of the Audience, and the Producers – There’s No Going Back: The Life and Work of Jonathan Demme
A Book Review by Ali Moosavi. An illuminating and loving portrait, packed with fascinating behind-the-scenes details….” I first came across Jonathan Demme’s name at college, when I watched Citizens Band (1977) at our local arts movie theatre. I thought this is a true quality independent picture. A few years later […]
Replicating Neoliberal Reform: Failed Mothers in John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood (1991) and Baby Boy (2001)
By Indya J. Jackson. Ultimately [through the depiction of failed mothers] Singleton replicates the anti-Black, anti-poor, and misogynistic rhetoric of neoliberal reformists by embedding a definite preference for fathers and the heteropatriarchal family structure within his films.” After Boyz N the Hood (1991) launched John Singleton into rarefied air, he […]
A Futurist Fascination – Strangelove Country: Science Fiction, Filmosophy, and the Kubrickian Consciousness
A Book Review Essay by Jeremy Carr. A well-researched work of personal scholarship, with an array of sources and citations utilized to substantiate D. Harlan Wilson’s own arguments or to initiate new avenues of thought….” D. Harlan Wilson wastes little time establishing the importance of the science fiction genre to […]
Where Criticism’s Headed: An Interview with Jonathan Rosenbaum
By Jonathan Monovich. Where we’re headed is a nightmare…. our language is so corrupted on so many different levels that we basically can’t even have film criticism now…. The language that we use is largely under the control of the industry.” —Jonathan Rosenbaum Born into a family of movie theater […]
Indelible Footprints: Joseph Maddrey’s The Soul of Wes Craven
A Book Review by William Blick. Maddrey illuminates the master from behind the scenes and shines a light on exactly what he means to the language of cinema.” Joseph Maddrey, author of Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue (2004) has a new title The Soul of Wes Craven (Harker Press) […]