A Book Review by Dávid Szőke. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas reveals the potential of contemporary filmmaking to challenge conventional cultural narratives about the witch, offering these figures greater space where they are no longer just passive objects of our anxieties but architects of their own stories.” The figure of the witch as […]
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 […]
The Unmanageable Maid
By Robert K. Lightning. Whether through indifference, innuendo, or caustic commentary, she makes her opinions apparent to her employers and, essentially, subverts any pretense of absolute authority over her. She is effectively unmanageable.” In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of its publication in 1973, I recently pulled Donald Bogle’s Toms, […]
“Nobody Knows the Trouble I See”: Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths
By Jeremy Carr. Why do some people behave as they do?… It’s the psychosocial terrain explored in Mike Leigh’s latest engaging slice of life….” All somebody has to do is spend about five minutes on social media to see that people are angry. Sometimes, the causes are obvious, widespread, and […]
A Rich Space for Personal Expression – Alexandra Heller-Nicholas on The Cinema Coven: Witches, Witchcraft and Women’s Filmmaking
By Jenny Paola Ortega Castillo. Hopefully the book will be part of a broader shift towards more focused, deeper critical dives into the nitty gritty of women’s horror filmmaking now that the field has been broadly solidified with incredible foundational texts….” Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’ career offers a rich tapestry of interests […]
Meanwhile on Earth: E.T. Phone Her(e)
By Elias Savada. For Elsa, her E.T. essence in her head never offers up an origin story or a political agenda, and this ambiguousness pushes the question – is this a cosmic lifeline or an invasion?” Leave it to the French (and writer-director Jérémy Clapin) to fashion this moody, low-budget, […]
Hollywood’s Star of Stars – Ferocious Ambition: Joan Crawford’s March to Stardom
A Book Review Essay by Jeremy Carr. More than a mere biography with chronological touchstones and historical anecdotes (though there are plenty of those, and they’re fascinating), it is also a psychological profile delving into the inner motivations of its subject, and a lavishly illustrated assessment of how a Golden […]
The Rhythm of Real Life: Michał Chmielewski on Roving Woman
By Savina Petkova. I think in the long take, we observe the rhythm of real life…. if we would cut between different emotional states, it would be artificial.” It would be reductive to call Roving Woman, the debut feature by Polish filmmaker Michał Chmielewski simply a road movie. That it […]
Clawing the Surface: Mary Dauterman’s Booger
By William Blick. A visceral metaphor for grief in an impressive low-budget indie debut…..” Mary Dauterman’s first feature length film, Booger, comes across as a cinematic exercise of sorts, i.e., a visceral metaphor for grief in an impressive low-budget indie debut. Not quite gory or suspenseful enough to satisfy the hardcore/ […]
Red Rooms: The Strategic Antipathy and Empathy of Emotional Contagions
By David Ryan. Writer-director Pascal Plante connects the complicated mechanisms of justice, social contagions, and psychological complexity to explore two dominant themes: the film contrasts the courtroom’s brightly lit (and tightly-controlled) semiotics with the digital world’s illicit market economy.” Red Rooms or Les Chambres Rouges (2023) focuses on the questionable […]