By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. A bedazzled, audacious dreamscape riddled with sex and violence and the ever-present spirit of high fashion…. we drift in and out of After Blue like something akin to a fever dream….” If your first encounter with the film worlds of French art-weirdo auteur genius Bertrand Mandico doesn’t […]
Stages of Revenge, New England-Style: John Pollono on Small Engine Repair
By Ali Moosavi. Great theater can be very cerebral, it can be very thematic, it can be very dialogue driven and stirring but it doesn’t necessarily have the same visceral stakes that a movie does. This play has cinematic stakes, so the transfer of it to film was just really […]
Inexorable and the Suffocating Expanses of Fabrice Du Welz (TIFF 2021)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. This Belgian filmmaker’s extraordinary mastery over space and his ability to manipulate our experience of it draws me into his frequently dark, sometimes tragic and commonly perverse movies.” There are few filmmakers whose movies so effectively create a sense of claustrophobia, of suffocation, of being closed in […]
“A Trial, by Nature, is Theatre” – Real to Reel: Truth and Trickery in Courtroom Movies
A Book Review by Tanja Bresan. An insightful and well researched book on judicial processes and views on expressing justice, its meaning, and duplicity within the Hollywood courtroom film genre.” Truth and Trickery in Courtroom Movies (Vandeplas Publishing, 2021) written and researched by two prominent law professors and cinephiles – […]
Dear Evan Hansen: Not Quite the Broadway Epiphany
By Elias Savada. The new movie adaptation, starring a now 27-year-old Platt, has a few problems…. the conversion to the big screen (of this tale concerning social anxiety disorder) brought the play’s A+ grade down to a B-minus.” Just over six years ago, a high school musical captured my heart […]
Multi-Protagonist Protest in Ghana: Kofi Ofosu-Yeboah on Amansa Tiafi (Locarno FF)
By Yun-hua Chen. I am from the André Bazin’s school of thought about realism. If I could let the camera roll non-stop, without touching it, I would let it run, if what is in front of me interests me….: Debut feature of the Ghanaian born Kofi Ofosu-Yeboah, who writes, directs, […]
Psychedelica Away from the Factory: José Pablo Escamilla on Mostro (Locarno FF)
By Yun-hua Chen. That’s what we aimed to do, to make a protest. In Mexico it’s been very hard for some years. This is a cry for justice.” A dreamy, yet political directorial debut by the Mexican director José Pablo Escamilla, Mostro is set in an undetermined dystopian time, but […]
Defying a Deadly Game: The Alpinist
By Elias Savada. A penetrating ride up the side of sheer madness, yet a celebration of one man’s individualism.” Been there, seen that. Well, if we’re talking about mountain climbing. No, not me personally. I’ve just watched a lot of rock (climbing) stars in movies glorifying those incredibly epic – […]
Steve Neale: Interrogating Cinema
By Frank Krutnik. Renowned for his groundbreaking work on genre, Neale has also made key interventions into other areas of film and media criticism…. [He] is not afraid to challenge critical orthodoxies, but does so not in a grandstanding manner but with a persuasive equanimity that invites us to rethink […]
Family Ties: Toby Poser and John Adams on The Adams Family’s Hellbender
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. After seven features, starting when the girls were 6 and 11 years old, we’ve learned how to dance together pretty well. It’s a constant evolution, not only our collective education with camera and sound equipment, but also in building a solid democracy as far as how we […]