Aftersun: The Skin of Filmic Memory
We all wait for everything to come into focus, and if we are lucky, we might eventually get access to one snapshot that tells an incomplete story. So naturally, while[…]
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We all wait for everything to come into focus, and if we are lucky, we might eventually get access to one snapshot that tells an incomplete story. So naturally, while[…]
Animation · Animators · Designers · Experimental & Underground
John Whitney himself envisioned nothing more and nothing less for the future of CGI than a union of space and time: “Time has become visual.” But all film deals in[…]
Comedy · Drama · French Cinema
Amélie brings life to the unseen. * * * Talk with someone about a piece of art, and they’ll tell you about themselves. Let me share my thoughts on Amélie,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Feminism · Indies · Interviews · SF & Fantasy
For me, on Supergirl, I was 100% in. It was the biggest opportunity that ever happened to me, and the process of making the film was very nourishing. I think[…]
DIY · Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Film Culture · Impresarios · Outsiders · Programmers
He told me about when his piano player canceled out of a silent movie performance. “I walked outside during the kiddie matinee and saw some young people loading musical instruments[…]
Body Horror · Horror · Mumblecore · Romance
Not only does May challenge the tropes of mumblecore and indie-rom com movies, but it also retells elements of Frankenstein, offering a female protagonist who is both monster and monster-maker.[…]
Biopic · Directors · Experimental & Underground · War · Writers & Critics
I’m not interested in what happened next; I’m interested in what happens emotionally next. It’s like memory. Memory isn’t linear. It’s cyclical. A tiny thing can be the thing that’s[…]
Hinting at women’s complicity in a film plotted around men’s violent treatment of women is, well, ballsy. That Cregger’s script doesn’t delve into the larger cultural conditioning and structures that[…]
Comedy · Communism and Socialism · Directors · Drama · Eastern European · Russia · War · Writers & Critics
Billy Wilder turned to these two plays because they offered the situations, structure, and characters that would allow his imagination to flower and create contemporary stories – a patriotic military[…]
Crime · Drama · Women in Film
Ramsay uses the distinct qualities of cinema, images and sound, to immerse you in the psychic space of her characters – and what an uncommonly beautiful space it is. It’s[…]
African American · Comedy · Drama · Eco · Race · Urban Conflict
The fundamental question of who will suffer the most from extreme heat, and on a broader scale climate change, is bound to systemic issues of race and class. Through Lee’s[…]
“Movies are dreams, doll, that you never forget,” says Mrs. Fabelman (Michelle Williams). She’s circling the nature of them, which the critic Andre Bazin described when he called cinema “an[…]
Dance · Drama · Exile and Displacement · Poverty · Theory
One of Frías de la Parra’s masterstrokes is to highlight the similar ways in which Monterrey and New York (otherwise such radically distinct cities) are brimming with diagonal lines: in[…]
Drama · Eco · Eco-horror · Essays
What does a scar tell us about a person? Where they’ve been, what they’ve been through, the style in which they conduct their lives. A scar is a reminder, an[…]
Brigadoon is a quasi-origin story that is closely associated with the way stories transform the reality of the recent past. Communities, societies, and nations survive by means of having sacrificial[…]
Just as Holy Motors simultaneously mourned the loss of physicality from filmmaking while embracing the creative possibilities offered by digital technology, Annette is built on a seeming paradox: it plunges[…]
Franchises & Series · Military and Paramilitary · Thrillers & Action · War
Top Gun might leave viewers with the negative impression that all naval aviators are infantilized, high-functioning, pride-stricken narcissists, and I’m going to let you in on a secret. We are. But most[…]
Actors & Personalities · Hollywood · Politics
If only Ronald Reagan had been a better actor, our world might be a brighter place today. * * * Although it’s been thirty-three years and six presidents since Ronald[…]
At last, seduction: the festival ended on a crescendo with Ennio, Giuseppe Tornatore’s expansive yet intimate tribute to the great Morricone. This is no superficial primer: Tornatore edits the film[…]
“You just can’t beat wild imagination.” – Bob Bottin * * * It took decades for John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) to find an audience, on home video and cable.[…]