By Yun-hua Chen. I believe that all characters possess innate sensibility, which surfaces when given a chance.” —Elene Naveriani “Do you realize how much beauty surrounds us? I wish to be alone, to do what I want, how I like, and when I like,” declares Etero, a 48-year-old woman from […]
On an “Interior” Documentary: Filmmaker Rachel Elizabeth Seed on A Photographic Memory
By M. Sellers Johnson. I loved the idea that I could convey the interior of my imagination in my documentary and that it could be anything, like a narrative film, because no one can argue with your imagination. And yet, it’s really my story, and these are real people.” Documentarian […]
Forgiveness of the Frontier: An Interview with Viggo Mortensen on Directing The Dead Don’t Hurt
By Yun-hua Chen. I think that, in some sense, forgiveness is more important than revenge. There’s a desire for revenge…. That’s sort of instant gratification for certain kinds of movie fans, but it’s not very interesting or realistic.” The Dead Don’t Hurt, a unique Western imbued with Viggo Mortensen’s distinct […]
Laughter over Comedy: from the Introduction to Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria in Early Cinema
By Maggie Hennefeld. Imagine being so hilarious that your jokes, impressions, or other repartee literally caused someone to laugh themselves to death.1 —“Does Your Stand-Up Act Need Death by Laughter Insurance?,” Trusted Choice, insurance web advertisement, August 10, 2019 Imagine being so wild and free that your laughter literally killed […]
It’s Alive (and Horny)! Zelda Williams’ Lisa Frankenstein (2024)
By Thomas M. Puhr. Newton really shines and has a funny swagger about her. It’s too bad the surrounding film never quite matches this winning performance.” Lisa is lonely. Her widower father, who has promptly remarried and moved in with Lisa’s new stepmother and stepsister out in the candy-colored suburbs, […]
Outsiders on the Frontier: Kitty Green on The Royal Hotel
By Ali Moosavi. I knew that I didn’t want to see violence. I feel like I’ve seen enough sexual violence in cinema…. I was like how can we make a movie about the threat of that. And the threat of that should be enough to feel scared.” The young Australian […]
Pastiche and Performance: Barbara Stanwyck in All I Desire (Douglas Sirk, 1953)
By Catherine Russell. The cinema exalts the role at the same time that it destroys the actor.” —Edgar Morin, The Stars Stanwyck made two films with Douglas Sirk in the 1950s—All I Desire (1953) and There’s Always Tomorrow (1955)—in which she gives two of her finest performances. In both films […]
Florid in a Good Way: Herbert Brenon’s The Spanish Dancer (1923)
By Thomas Gladysz. With a range of pictures to his credit – fantasies, adventure films, melodramas, historical epics – there are those who feel Brenon was a director without a defined, or at least a dynamic, style. There is truth to that assertion…. Adaptability, however, shouldn’t detract from an appreciation […]
Different Types of Love: An Interview with Todd Haynes on May December
By Ali Moosavi. I think on the one hand love is the way we enter into relationships which organize and structure our lives and come with the society either condoning of those choices or social opposition to them…. But also Roland Barthes the French writer and theorist wrote a lover’s […]
Never Change: Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla (2023)
By Thomas M. Puhr. A portrait of how the celebrity machine thrives on packaging and preserving its subjects as doll-like children who are denied the luxury of developing discernible inner selves.” The opening chords from Alice Coltrane’s “Going Home” accompany an overhead shot of two pristinely pedicured feet creeping along […]