By Cecilia A. Zoppelletto. The sophisticated style of The Paris Opera, whilst weaving stories of mundane occupations with the artistic highlights of this world, turns the documentary itself into an opera. The story, which follows the classic formula of the backstage picture by taking place in a theatrical setting where […]
Alaskan Neo-Noir: Sweet Virginia
By Elias Savada. As the latest shadowy slant on the malevolent small town subterfuge melodrama – following a few weeks after George Clooney’s Coen Brothers-inspired Suburbicon, which takes the neo-noir thriller sub-genre to totally outlandish levels – Sweet Virginia is a more personal, low-key affair that follows the aftermath of […]
Trauma and Courage: Barbara Kopple’s A Murder in Mansfield (DOC NYC)
By Kate Hearst. Barbara Kopple’s latest documentary revisits a high profile domestic murder case in Mansfield, Ohio in 1989, and reveals how this tragedy continues to haunt. In vérité style, Kopple follows thirty-eight-year-old Collier Landry as he returns to his hometown, where at age eleven, he witnessed the murder of […]
The Saga Doesn’t Begin – The Osiris Child: Science Fiction Volume One
November 12, 2017
By Elias Savada. If you create a film and title it to suggest it’s the beginning of a series, you better hope that your audience will arrive in quantity and that your product will offer up quality. Tossing in some originality would help, too, rather than using the beg-borrow-and-steal approach for […]
Truth and Consequences: Conversations with Buñuel by Max Aub, translated and edited by Julie Jones
A Book Review Essay by Jeremy Carr. “Even today, I’ve no idea what the truth is, or what I did with it.” – Luis Buñuel, My Last Sigh Compiling biographical information about Luis Buñuel is no easy task, and the contrived predisposition of the iconoclastic filmmaker doesn’t usually help. Fond […]
Lancing a Bourgeois Boil: The Square
November 6, 2017
By Elias Savada. Auteur provocateur Ruben Östlund loves to pick at society’s scabs – and make you laugh and writhe at any unsettling pus that oozes out. As with the squirm-inducing Force Majeure (2014), the Swedish writer-director’s funny-sad journey into middleclass smugness, The Square, his latest bourgeois boil being lanced, viewers […]
Starting the Revolution: Robin Campillo on BPM (Beats Per Minute)
November 6, 2017
By Tom Ue. Robin Campillo’s latest film BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017) is set in Paris, in the early 1990s, and it focuses on members of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), a group of activists who battle for those suffering from HIV/AIDS and who holds accountable different government agencies […]
Documenting the Final Days: Waiting for Kiarostami
November 6, 2017
By Ali Moosavi. Abbas Kiarostami’s passing in 2016 deprived the lovers of the 7th art of his unique blend of documentary and fiction, real and imaginary and left a very large void in Iranian and world cinema. Waiting for Kiarostami is the second tribute to the late master made after his death. […]
Two of a Kind: Faces Places
November 3, 2017
By Jeremy Carr. Once you accept and appreciate the superficial contrast between Agnès Varda (a legendary filmmaker, diminutive, inspirationally enthusiastic if rigid by age — she is pushing 90, after all) and JR (tall, lanky, young and mobile, a quintessentially hip modern artist), the rest of Faces Places begins to comfortably […]
It’s All About the (Many) Details – 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene
By Elias Savada. I can’t remember the first time I saw Psycho. I was a 10-year-old kid when Alfred Hitchcock’s menacing tale made more than a few people start avoiding motels. (Keep telling yourself: It’s only a motel! It’s only a motel!) The film wasn’t the kind of thriller my suburban […]