By Christopher Sharrett. Zhao’s film would seem to follow Bruder’s impulse in documenting a profound and perpetual economic crisis, as contemporary America’s bosses opt for an outsourced and financialized economy…. But the film’s critical concerns tend to leave center stage.” The opening card for Chloe Zhao’s Oscar-winning Nomadland informs us […]
Corbucci’s Wild Western: Django (1966)
By Jeremy Carr. Arrow’s laudable treatment of Django attests to the lasting interest in this unconventional and oftentimes striking fare.” Although his stature has risen in recent years, Sergio Corbucci has primarily resided in the shadows of his more famous spaghetti western counterpart, Sergio Leone. But like the sub-genre generally, […]
Peter, Paul and Mary: The Song Is Love – Excerpt from American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper
By Kristopher Woofter and Will Dodson. Can we turn on the lights again? Can we turn on the lights again?!” — Peter Yarrow, Peter, Paul and Mary: The Song Is Love According to Anne S. Lewis, an associate minister at the First Baptist Church of Austin in the late 1960s, […]
Revisiting Romero’s The Amusement Park (1973)
By Tony Williams. Spoiler alert: key plot details are discussed below.–Ed. The Amusement Park has much to say both at the time of its production (1973) and certainly now – but it is doubtful whether many will want to watch it nor listen to its message. It is a deliberately […]
Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre: Women Make Horror
The Mafu Cage (Karen Arthur, 1978)
Checking the Master, Film by Film: Hitchcock and the Censors
A Book Review Essay by Matthew Sorrento. Some criticisms noted, John Billheimer’s book is still very helpful for teaching history of regulation/censorship and their effects on authorship….” Hitchcock continues to compete with Welles as the “Shakespeare” of film studies in the sense that he’s the most analyzed in the medium, […]
An Honest Window: An Interview with Haifaa Al-Mansour
By Ali Moosavi. Attitudes do not change easily, so part of the goal of my film is to start a dialog about the core values that are at the heart of these issues.” Haifaa Al-Mansour, the award winning director and the first Saudi female filmmaker, has a new film, The […]
Post-War Malaise in the Rural US: Spring Night, Summer Night (1967)
By Tony Williams. I can’t help but reflect that noir and neorealism, contemporary film movements, may exactly be opposite sides of the same coin. (Isn’t Open City a noir, and The Sound of Fury an alternate version of The Bicycle Thief?) The key traits that they have in common are […]
Fiction Telling Early Hollywood About Itself: from The Last Word
By Justin Gautreau. Well aware of film’s representational constraints, technologically and politically, these writers told a different story than the one early Hollywood could tell about itself.” From its earliest days in Southern California, the film industry inspired a body of fiction that helped shape Hollywood as a place of romance […]
Shadows: Bela Lugosi on the Hungarian Silent Screen
Lugosi and Ila Lóth in a Hungarian silent film, possibly Leoni Leo (Leo Leoni, 1917)