A Book Review by William Blick. A candid and insightful look into Ferrara’s creative process….” The Greatest Gangster Movie You’ve Never Seen (BearManor Media, 2025) includes a candid and insightful look into Ferrara’s creative process with behind-the-scenes access to Ferrara’s collaboration with Director of Photography, Ken Kelsch whom Stewart has […]
“Pain Creates Character Distortion”: David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds
By Jonathan Monovich. Conspiracies brew throughout the film and their legitimacy, though probable, becomes increasingly unbelievable, mirroring the mind’s desperation for answers….” In Dead Ringers (1988), the troubled Dr. Beverly Mantle (Jeremy Irons) says that “pain creates character distortion.” This quote encapsulates the essence of David Cronenberg’s oeuvre. Cronenberg has […]
It Lives! Andrew Repasky McElhinney on A Chronicle of Corpses at 25 Years
By William Blick. Aren’t all genre films structuralist in nature? Isn’t everyone either obeying or disobeying genre conventions?” –Andrew Repasky McElhinney At the turn of the millennium, the filmmaking industry was in flux. A wave of visionary film directors emerged to embrace new forms of cinematic expression. The horror film […]
A Critic During Critical Times – Chris Marker: Early Film Writings
By Jeremy Carr. It quickly becomes evident how astonishingly active Marker was at the time. And yet, as volume editor Steven Unger observes, [this collection is] just the beginning of what is hopefully a progressive release and appreciation of Marker’s writing.” When introducing Chris Marker: Early Film Writings, editor Steven […]
A Strange Passion Indeed: Luis Buñuel’s Él (1953)
By Jeremy Carr. This story of hidden obsessions and malicious passions, climaxing in a scene of wild delirium, is like a bipolar soap opera and tragicomedy rolled into one subtly piercing satire of masculinity, authority, and persecution.” A Good Friday mass is underway. Somber music plays while altar boys have […]
It’s a Mad World, After All: Marco Ferreri: The Films of an Italian Provocateur
A Book Review by William Blick. In the true spirit of monomaniacal, egomaniacal, and nomadic film auteurs everywhere, Curti brings a vivaciousness to the text that immersed this reader into the brilliant and grotesquely absurdist world of Ferreri.” In film scholar Roberto Curti’s new book Marco Ferreri: The Films of […]
Considering the Last Breath: An Interview with Costa-Gavras
By Ali Moosavi. It’s an important personal lesson to myself to learn to prepare myself to die with dignity. The others cannot help you and I think you have to know the truth.” —Costa-Gavras I first became aware of Costa-Gavras, and quickly became a fan, in the Seventies after watching […]
Eve and Her Siblings: Edward Burns’ Millers in Marriage
By Jonathan Monovich. Burns intends on making the Millers artists and is keen to understand that partnerships, like artists, do not always have the spark.” Writer/Director/Actor Edward Burns has long strived to live by Robert Bresson’s words “make visible what, without you, might perhaps never be seen.”1 His first film, […]
Sweet Dreams: Irony, Power Dynamics, and Dance in Kinds of Kindness
By M. Sellers Johnson. Through acute genre-defying sensibilities of black comedy, arbitrary of conduct, supernatural inflections, and elusive drama, the multi-narrative Kind of Kindness presents messy, yet biting tales of humanity beset by submission, conspiracy, and cults of persuasion.” Kinds of Kindness (2024) is a vigorous power play of peculiar […]
Redefining Modernist Acting and Feminist Resistance: Isabelle Huppert, Modernist Performance
A Book Review by Jenny Paola Ortega Castillo. Author Florence Jacobowitz argues that Huppert’s artistic career represents a form of cultural resistance, using her art to challenge social norms and redefine what it means to be an actress in contemporary modernist cinema.” Isabelle Huppert, Modernist Performance by Florence Jacobowitz (Wayne […]