Actors & Personalities · Festivals & Awards · Historical & Epic
The moral of this particular dose of Oscar reality: You don’t have to be a royal to grab the Academy’s attention, but it sure helps if you’re pretending to be[…]
“Once you have a hammer, doesn’t everything look like a nail? In Hong Sang-soo’s films, everyone’s a nail.” * * * The most anticipated films on the festival circuit this[…]
Though moving a bit more stiffly in Lucky, Harry Dean is still moving, and that, the film says, is a beautiful thing. * * * SxSW wrapped up this past[…]
Experimental & Underground · Festivals & Awards
With so many films being made – many of which will never receive wide distribution – how do you navigate the glut of movies at a whopper like Toronto? *[…]
But even though Jesse (Elle Fanning) is “everything” right now, what she has is fragile: the aura of enchantment so prized by fashion is easily lost. Once she stops looking[…]
How radically mundane can things get? * * * Doing Nothing, Really Well At her workshops in New York, the renowned screenwriter Yvette Biro asks students to come up with[…]
Directors · Festivals & Awards
From the start of Blood of My Blood, we can sense the power that is contained within the mysterious malleability of light. Within a scene, some actions are clearly etched[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
“It’s time to give her story a better ending,” says Jane Anderson in her documentary Packed in a Trunk: The Lost Art of Edith Lake Wilkinson, speaking of her great[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Festivals & Awards
The Fifth Odessa International Film Festival was destined to be unlike its previous editions. Only two months previously, Odessa suffered an unprecedented peak in civil violence with the death of[…]
Directors · Festivals & Awards
“As directors such as Godard, Herzog, and Wenders take on 3D, we sense that for this generation of the avant-garde, the goal is no longer to test the audience’s reliance[…]
“Based on the sample of crowdfunded films at BAM, “public” funding in a country where public, government funding for arts is rapidly diminishing and has long since paled in comparison[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Portland, Oregon’s notoriety of late has come mainly from being satirized as over-the-top PC (Portlandia), its status as a foodie and craft beer paradise, a haven for runaway teens and activists,[…]
The author, who served on the critics’ jury at the festival, profiles the late Alain Resnais and his award-winning final film, along with several works by other directors. This Berlinale[…]
“With Ophuls too we need to be on our guard, given the idiosyncratic way he shapes material. There is often a tricky leakage of voice-over between successive scenes: at one[…]
“No-one can get over the paradox of a sphinx head on top of a chic model’s body: the sense of this slight figure propping up a magnificent mask.” Cinemania has[…]
Cinema has a way of capturing the unease of life, those wearying sharp fragments and provocations of everyday experience that reveal a greater truth. At the 54th Thessaloniki International Film[…]
“This year’s Kinotavr didn’t suggest a Russian film industry in meltdown even though some of the expected highlights were to prove deeply disappointing. On the other hand, there were pleasant[…]
“For some reason, works built on the masterpiece scale command instant respect, even if their structure is unsound . . . Although [The Great Beauty] looks and sounds like an epic, there is no definition in the detail — the film has been put together with hammer and tongs.”
Festivals & Awards · Uncategorized
“At a protest against the demolition of the historic Emek theatre, Nil was beaten and kicked by police offers. My fellow FIPRESCI juror, the excellent critic Berke Göl, was grabbed by the throat, punched, and arrested. Hundreds of other protestors — largely film critics, actors, and directors including festival guest Costa-Gavras — were subject to police force.”
“Moorehead cannot pause to celebrate performances of Adele and the fabulous Shirley Bassey because they contradict her depiction of the Oscars as an unabated mudslide of anti-woman vulgarity; she does not discuss the implications of Michelle Obama’s appearance, either. Why?”
