A Book Review by Tony Williams. During and since the time of Welles’s Centenary, many fine books and articles have appeared re-evaluating the work of a director once popularly regarded as a failure since making Citizen Kane, for one reason or another. Over the past few decades a dedicated group […]
Not Playing Smart: The Catcher Was a Spy
June 25, 2018
By Elias Savada. There’s an unsettling blandness flowing through The Catcher Was a Spy, a well photographed and impressively designed film about a fascinating character who made a mark in two wildly divergent professions. It’s a fictionalized account of Major League Baseball player Morris “Moe” Berg, as based on Nicholas Dawidoff’s […]
Life Commodified: Adilkhan Yerzhanov on Gentle Indifference of the World
June 21, 2018
By Ali Moosavi. When discussing world cinema, Kazakhstan is not a country which immediately springs to mind. Like many of the former Soviet Republic countries though, it is beginning to make a name for itself. These efforts received a major boost this year when the Kazak director Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s film, The […]
Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice: Against All Doctrine
By Christopher Sharrett. I have been meaning for some time to put pen to paper about Andrei Tarkovsky, about whom I’ve been hesitant for decades. A few remarks on the occasion of Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray of the director’s final film might be a good starting place for a consideration. […]
Film Scratches: Following the Logic of the Eye – noCOM (2014)
June 20, 2018
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. noCOM stands for “no comment,” according to filmmaker Walter Ungerer, and that is appropriate because this ten minute short, a sequence […]
Film Scratches: Wonderland of Pain and Survival – Toogie’s Trip to Bukuokuka (2016)
June 20, 2018
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Toogie’s Trip to Bukuokuka is a kind of S/M Alice in Wonderland, a menacingly surreal and fascinating 24 minute film by […]
Film Scratches: Euphoria Unmasked – Careless Camera Work on Clapham Common (2016)
June 20, 2018
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. In Jack Wormell’s aptly named five minute silent video Careless Camera Work on Clapham Common, he assembles shots taken from a […]
Film Scratches: Recent Short Films by Chang Po-Yang
June 20, 2018
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Chang Po-Yang is a young filmmaker from Taiwan. Here is a round-up of his recent experimental shorts. Je est un autre […]
Life Interrupted: Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside on América
June 18, 2018
By Gary M. Kramer. América, directed by Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside, is a lovely, poignant meditation on eldercare. The filmmakers capture the rhythm of the life of Diego, a young man living in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, who is called back to Colima to care for his grandmother, América, who […]
Fiercely Unpredictable: First Reformed
By Thomas Puhr. Paul Schrader takes Christianity seriously: no small feat, given that many “Christian” movies today are of the schmaltzy, Sunday School variety (i.e. God’s Not Dead, Heaven Is for Real). The writer-director’s latest offering, First Reformed (2017), reconfirms his status as one of America’s most unpredictable filmmakers (his […]