In a Motley Assortment: On Filmmaker Joanna Hogg

By Shonni Enelow. Hogg’s films present rich and compelling psychological characters while eschewing that legibility of motive.” Hogg’s films capture the tones and rhythms of contemporary relation quite differently from other historical realisms. The half-spoken, half-interrupted speech of her characters, the way they repeat themselves, revise their words, in conjunction […]

Lost and Found: In Praise of Josh’s Blair Witch Mix (1999)

By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. The Blair Witch Project – Josh’s Blair Witch Mix (1999) can be found online in full at Archive.org here. The essence of The Blair Witch Project that has made it so compulsively alluring for me has largely remained as elusive to me as ever. And then I […]

The Miyazaki Interlude: The Conscious and Unconscious Intervals of The Boy and the Heron (2023)

By David Ryan. Miyazaki moves beyond illustrating simple contrasts by creating relationships in apposition (not opposition), and this interdependency often encourages experiential growth for his younger protagonists.” Writer-director Hayao Miyazaki’s films are carefully planned adventures into the realms of innocence and experience. His abstract themes and dense stories have garnered […]

The Triple Protagonist Film: Challengers, Sex, and Gender

By David Greven. Echoing classical Hollywood and classical myth, the triple protagonist film of the present breaks new ground while reinforcing longstanding myths about sexuality and gender stereotypes.” In Luca Guadagnino’s great films, such as Call Me By Your Name (2017), Bones and All (2022), and I Am Love (2009), […]

Everyone’s Cinema Scholar: Remembering David Bordwell (1947-2024)

Film International editors, contributors, and correspondents offer personal tributes and commentary on the late scholar of cinema. I regret never having the pleasure of meeting David Bordwell. My only interaction with him was a lively email exchange little over 10 years ago. I was planning an article on the early […]

Movie Theaters Need to Win Us Back

By Gary D. Rhodes. Movie theaters must do more work to ensure that we are seeing unique content, not films that are already streaming or will be within a few weeks. And this means being clever, because movie theaters can show far more than just movies. (Thank you, Taylor Swift!)” […]