Clik here to view.
Notebook: The Disappearance(s) of Eleanor Rigby
All the lonely people, Where do they all come from? All the lonely people, Where do they all belong? The first time (though hardly the first time) these questions were posed, the “Her” and “Him” were...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NYFF Diary #4: Voilà l’enchaînement
Beau Travail In the films of Claire Denis, intimacy between people is a constant, insoluble problem. Her characters have to either structure their lives around avoiding the company of others (The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Review: Fury
The guy with a weathered snapshot of his girl waiting back home; the outer-borough New Yawker, pining for Coney Island dogs and Brooklyn Dodgers games; the ethnic soldier (could be a first-gen...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Intense Vocalization: Marguerite Duras
Hiroshima Mon Amour The Marguerite Duras retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center this month—18 years after the celebrated auteur’s death—presents an ideal opportunity to contemplate her...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kaiju Shakedown: Kim Ki-young
They called him Mr. Monster. From 1955 to 1990, Kim Ki-young was the lunatic in the attic of Korean cinema, a former newsreel propagandist who went on to write, direct, edit, and art direct deranged...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Notebook: From What is Before
Lav Diaz's latest movie, From What is Before, premiered in August at the Locarno Film Festival. His 2001 film Batang West Side screens October 19 as part of Film Society of Lincoln Center's series...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bombast: Fan Club
Pulp Fiction If Pulp Fiction, released twenty years ago this week, was the film cultural equivalent to Nirvana’s Nevermind in pop music—and I’ve argued this point more than once—then Quentin Tarantino...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Film of the Week: Force Majeure
The killer shot in Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure (aka Turist internationally) arrives 10 minutes into the film, lasts some four and a half minutes, and will leave you gasping, especially if you had no...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Interview: Ruben Östlund
With sparing (but incisive) dialogue, long takes, and majestic wide shots, Force Majeure depicts the crisis of faith surrounding a Swedish father, Tomas, who runs away from a life-or-death situation...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Film of the Week: Nightcrawler
Given that Nightcrawler is all about TV journalism, its content hardly screams “Breaking News.” The film reveals that freelance TV news-gathering is a nasty, amoral business, that TV news broadcasting...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Festivals: Camden International Film Festival
Located midway between the cities of Portland to the south and Bangor to the north, Camden is a snug little harbor town in Maine set off against the mountains which cradle it against the sea, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Interview: Laura Poitras
Laura Poitras’s Edward Snowden documentary CITIZENFOUR premiered at the New York Film Festival to extraordinary applause, reflecting not only the grip its subject matter exerts on the public but also...
View ArticleClik here to view.
NYFF: Critics Academy Entries
The below articles were produced as part of this year’s New York Film Festival Critics Academy, whose participants were invited to contribute writing on this year’s lineup. The Secret Sharer: Seymour:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bombast: 35, Stayin’ Alive
Avatar Digital projection came as a blitzkrieg, and carried the day before most of us knew what was happening. “Who would have dreamed film would die so quickly?” Roger Ebert wrote in November, 2011,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rep Diary: Winsor McCay
This year marks the 100th anniversary of one of the most influential films ever made. Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur was the first animated cartoon created by the self-described “originator and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kaiju Shakedown: 31 Asian Horror Movies
Talk about Asian horror and people usually think about J-horror’s dead wet girls with long black hair and bad attitudes, but scary movies have been flickering across Asia’s silver screens for decades....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Film of the Week: Goodbye to Language
Watching Jean-Luc Godard’s recent work can be a source of joy, but also of terror—especially if you’re trying to write about it. Your eyes are bombarded with violent, abrupt changes of texture, color,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bombast: Horror Business
The Quatermass Experiment Halloween, which traces its roots back to the Gaelic festival of Samhain, is preceded by the one week in the year when all natural order is inverted, and decent, upright film...
View ArticleVideo Essay: The Witching Hour
Pam Grossman is an independent curator, writer, and teacher of magical practice and history. She is the creator of Phantasmaphile, a blog which specializes in art and culture with a mystical bent,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Interview: Sergei Loznitsa
Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan had its world premiere last May in a special screening at Cannes, where it could be easily missed amidst the usual ballyhoo surrounding the main Competition. Yet Loznitsa’s...
View Article