For an alternate take on Shame, check out Kevin Ketchum’s review. Shame presents a fierce, urgent, aggressively artistic portrait of addiction and need in this modern age of isolationism. In a very singular character study, the film manages to speak volumes about societal d... Read More »
There is no more passionate film fan – and no greater proponent of film preservation – than Martin Scorsese. In a career spanning nearly 50 years, Marty has redefined the art form nearly every time he has stepped behind the camera, informing the thematic and stylistic preoccupati... Read More »
Millennium Mambo is a film that lives in the sterile glow of fluorescent lighting as it provides the humming backdrop for the malaise of youth. In this new world, the cathode ray tube is the new eye and it casts its imposing bluish radiation on every surface, causing faces to be ... Read More »
Stan Brakhage holds a high rank in my personal director canon. His boundless curiosity about the world, unique vision and philosophy on vision, and technical abilities were a powerful combination that resulted in an incredible body of work as he explored the mysteries of existenc... Read More »
How much you enjoy Hugo will largely depend on your own expectations of the film. If you’re expecting a rousing adventure, based on the marketing, you’ll likely end up a bit bored and confused. However, if you trust master filmmaker Martin Scorsese to craft an immersive, thoughtf... Read More »
Watching The Muppets, that rare, wonderful feeling washed over me – the feeling that I was witnessing something incredibly special. In an infectious synthesis of nostalgia and post-modernism, the film is a giddy treasure, the kind of experience that reminds us just how wonderful ... Read More »
In my progression of cinephilia, it seems that I tend to go full circle. I cast away films that I had previously enjoyed to move on to new frontiers, often at a disservice to those films that I believe that I am “moving past”. I think a lot of us go through these phases, and thes... Read More »
Silence. A vast mountainous landscape, bathed in the light of the setting sun. A bible passage, written in simple text across the screen: “I have said, ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes”. So begi... Read More »
The power of a film experience is limited by the filmic vocabulary of the observer. Approaches to viewing will grow and change over the years as the observer takes in more and more material that shapes this vocabulary, and elements that were once primary viewing objectives will t... Read More »
Flamingo No. 13 appears to have been made on a miniscule budget. Many of its cast are, evidently from their performances, new to film. The print currently travelling the international festival circuit is poorly subtitled, few lines grammatically sound and some even impossible to ... Read More »
Martha Marcy May Marlene is the year’s most singularly immersive film experience. It plants the audience firmly inside the mind of its protagonist and provides a first-person view of a tragedy told on two timelines. One of those timelines traces the origins of the tragedy and the... Read More »
The mythology of Pedro Almodóvar’s films is vast and rich. It encompasses numerous characters: From the nymphomaniac, Sexilia (Cecilia Roth), in Labyrinth of Passions (1982) to the transgender prostitute, Agrado (Antonia San Juan), in All About My Mother (1999); It encompasses nu... Read More »
We start our Subversive Saturday series with Brazilian filmmaker Julio Bressane’s 1969 film, Killed the Family and Went to the Movies. We begin with a series of static shots of women’s faces that are reminiscent of the works of Jean Luc Godard. Despite the film's homage to othe... Read More »
Cannes Review: La Jaula de Oro (2013)
Review: Epic (2013)
Cannes Review: The Immigrant (2013)
Cannes Review: Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013)
Review: The Hangover Part 3 (2013)
