NYFF Currents (Short Takes 2)
Humongous (Aya Kawazoe, 2020)
One of this year's stealthier entries in the NYFF Currents short film series, Humongous loo...
2020-09-17 04:14:08 +0000 UTC View Post
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NYFF Currents (Short Takes 1)
King of Sanwi (Akosua Adoma Owusu, 2020)
Conceived as a follow-up to her 2019 film Pelourinho, They Don't Really Care About Us...
2020-09-13 03:02:48 +0000 UTC View PostStump the Guesser! (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson, 2020)
Although Maddin and the Johnson brothers' latest production does not maintain the breakneck pace of Maddin's 2000 mini-masterpiece The Heart of the W...
2020-09-09 04:14:58 +0000 UTC View PostSiberia (Abel Ferrara, 2020)
NOTE: This review contains some thematic spoilers. You may want to go in cold for this one.
A film both fantastical and brutally c...
2020-09-08 19:44:15 +0000 UTC View PostApiyemiyekî? (Ana Vaz, 2020)
Ana Vaz's latest film begins with black and white footage that tracks around the empty square outside of an imposing government building. It could be a c...
2020-09-06 05:20:36 +0000 UTC View PostThere is No Evil (Mohammad Rasoulof, 2020)
This was a pretty strong year for the Berlinale, and of course it appears even stronger in retrospect, given that there was no Cannes and the Venice line...
2020-09-06 00:34:49 +0000 UTC View Post"I got a lion in my pocket, and baby..."
So, looking over the dismal competition lineup at Venice, I would say the odds-on bet to take home this year's by-default, Covid-tainted Golden Lion woul...
2020-09-05 23:01:24 +0000 UTC View PostIs It Safe?
Um, what the hell do you think?
Here in the still-roiling hot spot of Houston, Texas, I...
2020-09-04 09:16:38 +0000 UTC View PostParts & Labour (Julie Murray, 2020)
Another compelling answer to the problem of how to produce new work during a quarantine, Julie Murray's latest film combines curiosity with improvisation...
2020-09-02 20:08:41 +0000 UTC View PostFlying Over Brooklyn (Ernie Gehr, 2020)
This short video was commissioned by the Madison Square Park Conservancy, one of a number of pieces meant to show how New York artists are working, thinking, and faring during the quarantine. Most of the other works have a diaristic bent, but Erni...
2020-09-02 17:05:50 +0000 UTC View PostDisaster Capitalism?
I was afraid of this.
Are the emergency exigencies of COVID-19 now going to be an excuse for corporate film festivals and the industry at large to ...
2020-09-02 04:01:43 +0000 UTC View PostAutoficción (Laida Lertxundi, 2020)
Although they average between ten and fifteen minutes long, the films of Laida Lertxundi fall into the category that I have discussed elsewhere as "small...
2020-09-02 03:52:51 +0000 UTC View PostPatreon Problems?
Hey, so in the last 24 hours, I have lost nine subscribers. They are all listed as having their pledges declined. Interestingly enough, they are all from the same countries -- Finland and India, mostly, but a couple of unknown origin.
I have...
2020-09-01 18:07:05 +0000 UTC View PostLiminal (various directors, 2020)
A four-part omnibus commissioned by Mexico's FICUNAM, Liminal is apparently thematically united by the relationships between film and music. Clearly this is a pretty tenuous connection, since there are umpteen million ways that relationsh...
2020-08-31 23:26:50 +0000 UTC View PostTesla (Michael Almereyda, 2020)
Although Tesla bears a certain resemblance to Experimenter, Michael Almereyda's biography of Stanley Milgram, the new film is only a sh...
2020-08-31 11:50:32 +0000 UTC View PostThe Personal History of David Copperfield (Armando Iannucci, 2019)
Highly frustrating as an idea, Iannucci's Copperfield is unavoidably entertaining. This is because he and co-writer Simon Blackwell appear to be...
2020-08-26 02:03:04 +0000 UTC View PostWhat is this apocalypse missing? Korean zombies ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
FLASH POLL: Is Peninsula one of the Major, Definitive Films of 2020, which Any Good Cinephile Ought to See?
2020-08-25 20:52:11 +0000 UTC View PostFor Those of You Preparing Your TENET Reviews...
Since I was booted from Twitter, you, my loyal subscriber base, get to enjoy / tolerate the sort of things that probably would have been offhanded tweets of mine back in the day.
But seriously, I would expect that once the discussion of ...
2020-08-25 20:05:23 +0000 UTC View PostNeko the Cat: Total Bad-Ass (2008-2020)
As you may recall, I made a post in mid-May mentioning that my cat Neko was near death.
Well, as she had done several times before, Neko said "fuck...
2020-08-23 05:29:43 +0000 UTC View PostThe Bank Dick (Edward F. Cline, 1940)
Yes okay, too easy.
But just a note to say, I had two assignments to complete this week (one for Mubi, one for Cinema Scope), and I will have more ...
2020-08-19 18:09:43 +0000 UTC View PostSecret Zoo (Son Jae-gon, 2020)
I was looking for something a little different, and Secret Zoo fit the bill: a broad Korean comedy that adopted a goofy premise and then pretty ...
2020-08-15 05:13:20 +0000 UTC View PostShe Dies Tomorrow (Amy Seimetz, 2020)
[SPOILERS, I SUPPOSE]
While watching She Dies Tomorrow, I found myself puzzling over a problem that I eventually worked o...
2020-08-14 10:57:42 +0000 UTC View PostUndine (Christian Petzold, 2020)
As I was watching Christian Petzold's latest film, I found myself thinking of an oddly appropriate French / English pun. Historically, French newspapers ...
2020-08-14 03:41:20 +0000 UTC View PostThe Fever (Maya Da-Rin, 2019)
...although it's a bit tempting to refer to this film as The Highly Symbolic Fever, since the mysterious illness is a big clunky metaphor. And w...
2020-08-09 23:04:10 +0000 UTC View PostFirst Cow (Kelly Reichardt, 2019)
There is a jarring simplicity to Kelly Reichardt's First Cow, a modesty that, on close inspection, serves to momentarily disguise just how perfe...
2020-08-06 19:50:36 +0000 UTC View PostDid You Know This Existed?
This is one of the weirdest things I have ever stumbled upon.
2020-08-05 02:27:45 +0000 UTC View Post
2020-08-04 19:54:49 +0000 UTC
Clementine (Lara Gallagher, 2019)
In 1995, painter David Salle directed his one and only feature film, Search and Destroy. It was utterly forgettable. (Who'd have thought that of...
2020-08-04 17:47:09 +0000 UTC View PostArtificial Light (Hollis Frampton, 1969)
One of Frampton's simplest films, it's also probably the one that most clearly exemplifies what the supposed project of "structural film" is all about. I...
2020-08-03 21:54:47 +0000 UTC View PostCompletism: New Rules?
A while back, I decided that cinephile completism had to have limits. This was mostly around film festival slates (Cannes, NYFF) that included movies I c...
2020-08-03 21:17:20 +0000 UTC View Post