By Alex Brannan. There is a critical stigma to the small subset of films that comprise the rape-revenge genre – or, at the very least, a healthy hesitation. In 1980, Roger Ebert famously took down Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave, calling it “a vile bag of garbage … without […]
An Archive of Indoctrination: Hitler’s Hollywood
April 16, 2018
By Jeremy Carr. Even if there wasn’t a compelling, underlying thesis to Hitler’s Hollywood: German Cinema in the Age of Propaganda: 1933–1945, this 2017 film by Rüdiger Suchsland would still be a valuable, fascinating record. For the sheer breadth of assembled material, an overwhelming array of Third Reich-era film clips from […]
Losing Touch: Ready Player One
April 11, 2018
By Dean Goldberg. While I’ll admit that Pong was the last video game I had any interest in and more recently got sea sick when a colleague slipped goggles on my head for a virtual world tour, I was still pretty excited when asked to review Steven Spielberg’s new film, Ready […]
Unfertile Perspectives – A Green and Pagan Land: Myth, Magic and Landscape in British Film and Television by David Huckvale
A Book Review by Tony Williams. According to an old saying about not judging a book by its cover, the same can apply both to the image on the cover as well as the subtitle. This latest study by David Huckvale, A Green and Pagan Land: Myth, Magic and Landscape […]
Metafictional Examination: The Workshop
By Travis Merchant. Recently, the rise of extreme right-wing groups and individuals have done more than upset the quotidian structure to society. More often than not, these individuals seem bent on violence and nationalistic tendencies. It began with the criticism of the European Union and the sudden, unpredicted secession of the United Kingdom […]
War’s Veiled Aftermath: 1945
By Jeremy Carr. On the day of her son’s wedding, presumably the central event of 1945, drug-addled Anna (Eszter Nagy-Kálózy) ominously observes, “I’ve got a bad feeling.” At the time, this comment refers to the approaching marriage of her timorous son, Arpad (Bence Tasnádi), to the notoriously unfaithful Kisrózsi (Dóra […]
Placing Theory and Practice – Spectatorship: Shifting Theories of Gender, Sexuality and Media edited by Roxanne Samer and William Whittington
April 4, 2018
A Book Review by Dean Goldberg. While the introduction to this collection of published essays from the storied Spectator, the University of California’s premier film journal, provides an articulate jumping off point for the text, the book itself is certainly not a page turner. Not that it should be; Spectatorship: […]
Deceit and Inconsistency: The China Hustle
March 30, 2018
By Travis Merchant. A decade has passed since the beginning of an economic recession that many still feel today. The recession of 2008 brought about a collapsed American market that desperately searched for a shining light to capitalize on to regain its losses. Consequently, it found China: a topic that Jed […]
Max Winkler’s Flower Sour
By Elias Savada. I didn’t like Max Winkler’s first feature, the dreary comedy Ceremony (2011), a quirky tic of a wedding crasher film. My impression of his directorial abilities hasn’t changed much in Flower, a jaded Valley Girl vigilante drama that screams “watch my petals wilt” as shell-shocked patrons wander […]
Andy Goldsworthy’s Landscape Art: Leaning Into the Wind
March 26, 2018
By John Duncan Talbird. In the opening of the new documentary, Leaning Into the Wind, artist Andy Goldsworthy tours a small home in the mountains in Brazil. To Western eyes, the dwelling might seem pre-modern, even decrepit. But to Goldsworthy, all he sees is the handcraft of the residence, the sturdy […]