By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. South African filmmaker Jenna Bass has made somewhat of a splash with her third film, Flatland, as it makes its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival after it opened the Panorama section of the Berlinale earlier this year. Aside from previous features Love the One […]
A Young Woman’s Noble Fight: Ms. Purple
Yun-hua Chen
September 22, 2019
By Yun-hua Chen. Justin Chon, the American actor of Korean descent who made his name since his role as Eric in The Twilight Saga a decade ago, has established an increasingly distinct directorial voice addressing Asian-American stories and strikes a chord with ethnic minorities who rarely enter the mainstream in […]
Hitler is Not Your Friend: Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit (Toronto International Film Festival)
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
September 19, 2019
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. With its world premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit functions as the final installment of the filmmaker’s informal trilogy that focuses on the subjective experience of boyhood. In 2010’s Boy, the eponymous protagonist is an 11-year-old played by James Rolleston, while in 2016’s […]
Portrait of a Lady on File: Seberg (Toronto International Film Festival)
Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
September 19, 2019
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Although often unspoken, there is a frequently assumed “right” and “wrong” way to approach an artist’s body of work, be they a novelist, composer, director or actor. In this sense, I came to Jean Seberg all wrong. My first encounter with her was not the default “essentials” […]
Think You Know the Syrian Conflict? Think Again: For Sama
September 16, 2019
By Ali Moosavi. Many years ago, I attended a scientific conference in Damascus. I was touched by the beauty of the place and hospitality of its people. Many of the conference delegates stayed a few extra days to visit Aleppo. They described as a truly historical city of unrivalled beauty […]
On Mutants, Monsters and Mushroom Clouds – Apocalypse Then: American and Japanese Atomic Cinema, 1951-1967 by Mike Bogue
September 13, 2019
A Book Review by Matthew Fullerton. Apocalypse Then (McFarland, 2017) is an informative and entertaining examination, and comparison, of science fiction films from the U.S. and Japan with both indirect and direct ties to the “nuclear threat,” such as testing, accidents, fallout, radiation, and war. The author Mike Bogue, an American […]
Dachra: A Different Kind of Tunisian Revolution
Greg Burris
September 3, 2019
By Greg Burris. Early on in the Tunisian horror film Dachra (Abdelhamid Bouchnak, 2018), we see a class of university students as they listen to their professor’s instructions for their final assignment. The students are to arrange themselves into groups and produce a filmed investigative report on a subject of […]
A Complete Man of the World – Jean Gabin: The Actor Who Was France by Joseph Harriss
August 27, 2019
A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. Usually, I’m hesitant when presented with another biography for review. Despite the dedication and research involved, there often occurs a fundamental similarity in approach and, sometimes, lack of critical and insightful qualities when covering the actor’s films themselves. What makes them distinctive? Is […]
A Subjective and Concise Triumph – The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media and the Radical Imagination by Greg Burris
August 24, 2019
A Book Review Essay by Ali Moosavi. There is an old adage that oppression and suppression fuels creativity. In the world of cinema, this is best exemplified in Palestinian Cinema. For a nation of less than five million people, it is undoubtedly the shining star in the Arab Cinema. In […]
An Invigorating Romp: Murray Pomerance’s A Dream of Hitchcock
August 24, 2019
A Book Review by John W. Fawell. The title of Murray Pomerance’s latest book on the films of Alfred Hitchcock, A Dream of Hitchcock (SUNY Press, 2018), refers to both the book’s content and its form. Pomerance means this book to be a study of the recurring motif of dreams […]