Directors · Horror · SF & Fantasy
“It’s better to be a human being than an imitation.”- John Carpenter, on The Thing * * * 1. Begin with sound. Begin with Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). A[…]
Directors · Essays · Philosophy
“Mystery is good, confusion is bad. And there’s a big difference between the two.” – David Lynch * * * A survey of the critical literature pertaining to David Lynch’s[…]
Biopic · Directors · Drama · Experimental & Underground
“Hollywood oddballs are like everything else in Hollywood. Don’t look too close.” * * * Greg Sestero’s now reasonably famous book The Disaster Artist, co-written by Tom Bissell, is much[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground
Davies – who can be described as a cultural conservative but never a simple nostalgist – wears his affection for his forgotten eras on his sleeve, generally eschewing close-ups in[…]
Fucking Innocent: The Early Films of Wes Anderson, by John Andrew Fredrick. $15.95, 288 pp. Rare Bird Books, 2017. The first thing to note about John Andrew Fredrick’s book is[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors
“The major point of convergence between Cassavetes and the Dogme movement is an oppositional realist form that blurs the boundaries between being and performing.”
Directors · Interviews · Romance
On The Love Witch: “I like to make films with a kind of dream logic. My films are a mix of reality and fantasy, or a mix of what is[…]
Biopic · Directors · Writers & Critics
Rather than trying to frame the narrative as a means of truly understanding the mind of its subject, the film emphasizes that the central figure himself controls access to his[…]
The gender of work in the work films is a spectrum that includes both the neutered worker of The Bellboy and The Errand Boy and the feminized worker of Cinderfella,[…]
The truth is that they tend toward philosophical absurdism, rather than nihilism, and this perspective is what either makes or breaks their film in terms of commercial appeal. The draw,[…]
Activist & Political · Asian · Directors · Interviews
“India has always assigned a special sort of power to film . . . an extraordinary power to corrupt gullible masses has been given to cinema.” – Rakesh Sharma *[…]
Directors · Film Technology & History · SF & Fantasy
The very foundation of Lucas’s cinematic philosophy is newness – this comes through in his obsession with technological possibilities, and through his genuinely childlike pursuit of spectacle and wonder. His[…]
Regret is perhaps Payne’s greatest theme. The continual human dramedy, the elegiac comedy, a country full of people with limited potential raised to think everyone is special, confined souls struggling[…]
He studied and documented his country’s history, politics, and national myths in both film and theater, and was a beloved mentor to countless young filmmakers. * * * Andrzej Wajda[…]
Hooper’s interest in horror articulates itself primarily in formal invention: how can the frame be used to incapacitate viewer expectations? * * * Tobe Hooper’s most recent feature film, Djinn[…]
Comedy · Directors · Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · Silents
From his very beginnings as a filmmaker, Griffith understood the efficacy of location shooting. Putting actors into real landscapes and streets not only went to authenticating the narrative but had[…]
Art doesn’t have to be autobiographical, does it? Woody can write about the kid he wasn’t as well as the kid he was, can’t he? * * * I haven’t[…]
Directors · Drama · Interviews
Editor’s note: This is the second director interview by our correspondent Amir Ganjavie, this one conducted at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival. The film discussed, My Mother, is being released in the U.S.[…]
Shyamalan’s three films portray an imbalanced and endangered world; they engage to varying degrees with the imagery and anxiety surrounding terrorist attacks in the wake of September 11, 2001, while[…]
The homely, jowly face, dictatorial blatherings, and ragged leather chaps masked one of the great makers of modern cinema Few filmmakers lived their private lives more publicly than Rainer Werner[…]
