Tribeca 2013 Festival Report

By Michael Miller. The Tribeca Film Festival has developed a reputation for its documentary program, which it further burnished in 2013. A few notable titles presented at the festival this year were: Big Shot (directed by Kevin Connolly), part of the festival’s ESPN Sports Film Festival, which winningly profiles John […]

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

By Jacob Mertens. The modern blockbuster has become a strange, new beast before our eyes. In the nascent days of the Star Trek series, the fantasy of galactic travel could only prove as tangible as limited special effects technology allowed. Now, the aesthetics of the science fiction film take on […]

66th Cannes Film Festival Day 9 – La Belle et Le Bête and Opium

By Moira Sullivan. The remaining three days of the festival continued an ongoing feast of cinematic treasures. Salle Bunuel screened a double feature on May 24th to honor Jean Cocteau. Fifty years have gone by since his death in 1963 and the festival paid him tribute. Cocteau was a previous […]

Bava x 2: Black Sabbath and Baron Blood

By Cleaver Patterson. There was a time before the advent of CGI, when horror movies had to rely on subtlety to induce fear in the viewer. Indeed older films from the horror genre still work today because they used elements, such as fear of the unknown or being alone, which […]

66th Cannes Film Festival Day 7 – Wakolda and We Are What We Are

By Moira Sullivan. Two films that sounded promising on Day 7 were clearly well made but lacked any compelling pull for the cineaste. Lucía Puenzo’s Wakolda, a title referring to the name of a doll, promised a powerful story, but the narrative got flattened in the making of the film. […]

15th Udine Far East Film Festival

By Moira Sullivan.  The 15th Udine Far East Film Festival opened on April 19 and ran through April 27, with a great lineup of films from East Asia. Located in a small town in Italy near the Austrian border, and simply known as the Udine Festival for short, the event […]

The Great Gatsby (2013)

By Jacob Mertens. It was the summer before my sophomore year at high school, and I sat in a rundown bargain theater that only showed films months past their theatrical release. My mother had dragged me to a strange film called Moulin Rouge! (2001), and if I am to be […]