Virtually Everything: All Godard and Tsai at Melbourne International Film...
Even more than in The River, with The Deserted we are sensually implicated in the small gestures of rest and relief, saving graces in this abandoned world. When Lee later[...] The post Virtually...
View ArticleGot a Light? David Lynch’s Festival of Disruption (Oct. 13-14, 2018)
Francis Ford Coppola introduced the screening of his Robin Williams vehicle Jack. Since this was the Festival of Disruption, Coppola said he wanted to “disrupt” by screening his worst film,[...] The...
View ArticlePop Deluxe: Natalie Portman and Sasheer Zamata at Toronto International Film...
Rather than a fascist leader, in Vox Lux Celeste suggests a different sort of monstrosity – a receptacle for the nation’s horrors and fantasies, even more than a Madonna or a[...] The post Pop Deluxe:...
View ArticleThe 59th Thessaloniki International Film Festival, Greece (Nov. 1-11, 2018)
From volatile sibling relationships to House of Atreus–style depravity, traditional ideas about family were upended and replaced with a contemporary look at the complex, ever-expanding definition of...
View ArticleGetting It Right the Second Time: Adapting Ben-Hur for the Screen
This is an updated and revised version of Gordon Thomas’s article first posted in Bright Lights in May 2006, reposted to celebrate Easter. * * * Bigger is better this[...] The post Getting It Right the...
View ArticleDispatch from Tribeca 2019 #1: Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound
Herewith we begin our coverage of the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, courtesy of our intrepid reporter Claire Baiz, who will be filing dispatches on some of the more worthy entries[...] The post Dispatch...
View ArticleDispatch from Tribeca #4: Standing Up, Falling Down
In her fourth report from the Tribeca Film Festival, Claire Baiz looks at first-time feature director Matt Ratner’s intriguing family drama Standing Up, Falling Down, which, as a thoughtful film[...]...
View ArticleMetallica’s Kirk Hammett on Introducing Kids to Scary Movies, Why He Likes...
* * * It’s The Day of the Triffids’ fault: when he was a wee lad stuck at home in front of the television with a sprained arm (fault: sister,[...] The post Metallica’s Kirk Hammett on Introducing Kids...
View Article“Tolstoy and Only Tolstoy. Nothing Comes from Us”: Sergei Bondarchuk’s War...
“What do such large loose baggy monsters, with their queer elements of the accidental and the arbitrary, artistically mean?” – Henry James, from the preface of his novel The Tragic[...] The post...
View ArticleThe View on Parade: Xavier Dolan, Richard Billingham, and the Limits of...
It seems a good opportunity to talk about film and nationhood, given that so many of this year’s local films – not only A Family but Alice, Buoyancy, and Animals[...] The post The View on Parade:...
View ArticleReady for the Close-up: Filmmaking Then and Now in the Baltic States
Note: We’re publishing this to coincide with New York’s Scandinavia House’s important second festival devoted to Baltic cinema. * * * Introduction The second New York Baltic Film Festival will[...]...
View ArticleDispatch #1 from 2019 Doc NYC: Barbara Kopple’s Desert One
This is the first in a series of reviews by our New York correspondent Claire Baiz of entries in this year’s Doc NYC, the Big Apple’s – and one of[...] The post Dispatch #1 from 2019 Doc NYC: Barbara...
View ArticleAt Spahn Ranch: The Tragic Heart of Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood
Who are these people? Watching Cliff try to figure it out is painful, because we know the future, but such knowledge is not power. Within its imagined boundaries, Once Upon[...] The post At Spahn...
View ArticleWomen in Film: Interviews with Mati Diop, Marie Kreutzer, Haifaa al-Mansour,...
Our globe-trotting correspondent Amir Ganjavie spoke with four emerging women directors at the 2019 Berlinale and Toronto International Film Festivals and the 2020 Sundance Festival. Collectively, they...
View ArticleRose Is a Rose: The 2020 International Short Film Festival Oberhausen
Watching as a FIPRESCI festival juror from Australia, at all hours of night and day, I was overwhelmed by the breadth of the international program, with its dizzying, often undifferentiated,[...] The...
View ArticleA Tale of Two Bookshops: Sex and Books and The Big Sleep
We missed World Book Day (March 5) this year, but what the heck. In these challenging times, we celebrate all things literary anyway by re-presenting Paroma Chatterjee’s brilliant take on[...] The post...
View ArticleCelebrating National Pet Memorial Day (Sept. 13): Good Dog/Bad Dog: The...
Today, September 13 (the second Sunday of September), is National Pet Memorial Day, and we can’t think of a single cinematic pet more deserving of memorializing than that ill-fated, long-suffering[...]...
View ArticleThe Soviet Past Spoils Romanian Documentary Cinema: Adrian Pîrvu’s Everything...
There would be nothing wrong with taking sides in such a heated ideological debate if any of the five films screened this year in the prestigious Romanian Days section of[...] The post The Soviet Past...
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