By Ali Moosavi. At my age, receiving such an award may be a sign that you have reached the end of the line and this is an appreciation for going on this journey that I have travelled for 44 years. But I don’t see it that way. I can’t imagine […]
Complicated Feelings – John Bleasdale on The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick
By M. Sellers Johnson. A lot of the people who worked for Malick have a lot of affection for him and want to protect him. They have this complicated feeling that they’re really keen to tell stories but they don’t want to be seen to be spilling the beans. Having […]
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion: M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap
By James Slaymaker. Shyamalan’s careful misdirection reveals much about his protagonist, the society he lives in, and the capacity of cinematic form to perpetuate dominant cultural values.” Spoilier Alert In the final sequence of M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap (2024), there’s a moment when Cooper Adams (Josh Hartnett), a serial murderer […]
The Grand and the Personal – King Vidor in Focus: On the Filmmaker’s Artistry and Vision
A Book Review by William Blick. Informative, erudite, and comprehensive in several ways, with exhaustively precise details of Vidor’s career.” When I opened the pages of Kevin Stoehr and Cullen Gallagher’s new book, King Vidor in Focus (McFarland, 2024), I was immediately drawn to Vidor’s “Creed and Pledge” in the […]
Rebel Revelations – Mavericks: Interviews with the World’s Iconoclast Filmmakers
A Book Review by Jeremy Carr. The variance of the interviews in Mavericks is part of what makes the book such an engaging read. No two are exactly alike, and any given conversation yields surprising and rewarding conclusions.” Gerald Peary makes it clear, from the very beginning, what readers can […]
“Starting with a Lie to Gather Unity” – Abbas Kiarostami: Interviews
A Book Review by Ali Moosavi. The collection, edited by Monika Raesch, is really two books under one cover – an extensive critical introduction to Kiarostami, authored by Raesch, and roughly 100 pages of interviews in which the filmmaker proves to be surprisingly open and eminently quotable.” Though the renowned […]
An Ardent Appreciation – Crooked, but Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges
A Book Review by Jeremy Carr. While Klawans routinely sings the praises of Sturges, he also expresses an evenhanded awareness of certain shortcomings, making this critical analysis from Columbia University Press a perceptive, exceptionally well-composed and earnest evaluation.” Lest there be any doubt about Stuart Klawans’s regard for the subject […]
Portrait of a Singular Artist – Chantal Akerman Retrospective Handbook by Joanna Hogg and Adam Roberts
A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. If the likes of Kubrick or Bergman have more or less been deified, surely she belongs in this secular pantheon.” If, like me, The Criterion Collection and Eclipse Series – through their pristine releases of Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), […]
Contemporary Neorealist Principles in Abbas Kiarostami’s Filmmaking (1997 – 2005)
By Luke Buckle. ABSTRACT Iranian film has in recent decades comprised an increasingly important and influential cinema. The Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979 paved the way for freedom of artistic and literary expression, communicating a new generation of unheard voices in Iranian society. More specifically Iranian cinema has progressed in […]