By Thomas M. Puhr. Here is a filmmaker who remains unafraid of taking big creative risks but has clearly struggled with the ethical implications of adapting this dark chapter from American history. His heart is in the right place, but is he not still on that stage at the end?” […]
Different Types of Love: An Interview with Todd Haynes on May December
By Ali Moosavi. I think on the one hand love is the way we enter into relationships which organize and structure our lives and come with the society either condoning of those choices or social opposition to them…. But also Roland Barthes the French writer and theorist wrote a lover’s […]
The Surveillance Economy of David Fincher’s The Killer (2023)
By David Ryan. The Killer argues that no matter how much security wealth buys or the number of datalocks that conglomerates build, these defenses can be poked and usurped by determined criminals. Conversely, no matter how clandestine criminal cells are organized, they can be destroyed, particularly from within.” Spoiler Alert […]
The Essential is (In)visible to the Eye: The Human Figure on Film
A Book Review by Dávid Szőke. Author Seth Barry Watter discusses four interlocking, yet separate modes of looking: the natural, the pictorial, the institutional, and the fictional. Each comprises a specific way of seeing, explains the author, whereby we select and assign different concepts to our constructions of knowledge, meaning, […]
Never Change: Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla (2023)
By Thomas M. Puhr. A portrait of how the celebrity machine thrives on packaging and preserving its subjects as doll-like children who are denied the luxury of developing discernible inner selves.” The opening chords from Alice Coltrane’s “Going Home” accompany an overhead shot of two pristinely pedicured feet creeping along […]
Making Of, The Pulse, and Others on the Side: Selections from the 80th Venice Film Festival
By Ali Moosavi. Gabrielle: I still get eaten up. Vincent: Yes, but you get the shot! –from On the Pulse The side sections of the major film festivals often offer works that are as interesting, or sometimes more interesting, than the films in the main section. Here are a few […]
Things They Don’t Do on Broadway: Selections from the 59th Chicago International Film Festival
By Jonathan Monovich. Reporting from the U.S.’s ‘Second City,’ the home of the North America’s longest running film festival….” The Chicago International Film Festival is the longest running film festival in North America. This year marks the festival’s 59th anniversary. Founded by Michael Kutza, the history of the festival is […]
Collaboration to the Maximum: Jerzy Skolimowski and Ewa Piaskowska on EO
By Nathaniel Bell. More important was the fact that I changed my attitude toward creation. I was enthusiastic again. Young, fresh, and ready for experiments and risks.” –Jerzy Skolimowski Au hasard Balthazar is the only film that made Jerzy Skolimowski cry. In 1966, having recently completed his second feature, the […]
Unearthing the “Story” of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation: Landsberry-Baker and Peeler’s Bad Press
By Jenny Paola Ortega Castillo. If people are not liking you, then you’re doing your job.“ -Angel Ellis Freedom of the press is a fundamental right guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution; it has been a cornerstone of American democracy since its ratification in 1791. Nonetheless, […]
The Holdovers: Alexander Payne Rises Again
By Elias Savada. A big, gift-wrapped present filled with sentimentality and lovely, effective performances….” Always a visionary, and one whose seven previous features as a director have garnered considerable acclaim—the sole, gaping-wound exception being 2017’s Downsizing, a disastrous journey into sci-fi dramedy with Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig—director-producer-writer Alexander Payne […]