msicism

The Section Formerly Known as Masters

Last year, TIFF edged toward maybe considering reviving its terminated Masters program(me), not by putting the section back but by adding a sort of subcategory to a few of its films in other sections. Se...

The Age of Innocence (Martin Scorsese, 1993)

BY REQUEST: Chris Lester

Last seen November 2003. Although it's unfair, when I watch The Age of Innocence I cannot help comparing it in my mind with Terence Davies' aston...

Our Body (Claire Simon, 2023)

A film is always several things at once. To a great extent, it is a group of images and sounds that are assembled into a text, a piece of communication that has its own material relationships and formal...

Arcadia (Yorgos Zois, 2024)

Maximum big surprise? 

No, not exactly, but Arcadia is watchable enough, given that Zois lays out a number of worthy gimmicks and follows them where they'd logically go. If you ever ...

David Bordwell (1947-2024)

Few academics in the humanities have had the impact, in their field and beyond it, that David Bordwell had. He and his partner Kristin Thompson essentially created a whole new discourse within film stud...

No Hard Feelings!

I've been meaning to leave a note here to acknowledge a situation that might be weird, although I certainly don't want it to be. A few of the recent choices from the subscriber lottery have been...

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow, 2023)

Like many of you, I've been hearing about Joanna Arnow for a while now. In cinephile circles, her films I Hate Myself :) and Bad at Dancing have gotten an unusual amount of attention f...

The Aerial (Esteban Sapir, 2007)

BY REQUEST: Daniel

One of the reasons I enjoy the subscriber lottery so much is that I end up watching films I almost certainly wouldn't otherwise see. And even when I don't like ...

A Sense of Nothing (Francisco Rojas, 2024)

Rojas' last film, A Sea of Glass, was one of my favorite films from 2023, and I fessed up to the fact that I wanted to program it in my Houston show, but was worried its length would be too daun...

Lovely Rita (Jessica Hausner, 2001)

My feelings about Club Zero, which are conflicted but nevertheless quite negative, prompted me to go back to Jessica Hausner's debut, a film that I recall getting quite a bit of love on the fest...

Entrance Wounds (Calum Walter, 2023)

If you haven't yet read Phil Coldiron's piece in Cinema Scope #97, on the films of Ros...

Three Recent Films by Colectivo Los Ingrávidos

The somewhat anonymous Mexican experimental film group Colectivo Los Ingrávidos are astonishingly prolific. When one checks in with their Vimeo page, it's often the case that the group have posted a sudden spate of new works. Some of them are fully digital, while others at least originate on cel...

Lottery Without Balls

There still remains one selector from the previous batch, but I wanted to go ahead and line up the next three deciders.

As always, contact me either through Patreon messages or email (mjsicinski@gm...

Club Zero (Jessica Hausner, 2023)

"The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life." (Walter Benjamin)

I have ...

Anticipation of the Night (Stan Brakhage, 1958)

It's another InRO special, this time permitting me to go long, and hopefully deep, on one of Brakhage's first definitive works. Here's a sample:

"It may be reductive to compare Schoenberg’s break...

Short Fuse (Warren Sonbert, 1992)

Obviously there's a great deal to be said about Warren Sonbert's films on a formal level. His montage style was utterly unique in that it created small time-events while also avoiding linear narrative. A...

How to Have Sex (Molly Manning Walker, 2023)

ABOVE: a vaguely phallic swimming pool

I must admit, I am not sure there is any version of this film I would have really appreciated. How to Have Sex is a young person's film, and...

Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Phạm Thiên Ân, 2023)

It's a familiar gambit. A first-time filmmaker, uncertain that the funding vicissitudes of venture capital will ever allow him another at-bat, throws every stray idea into the debut, some sticking and ot...

Recent InRO Pieces

Welp. With the official end of Cinema Scope after 25 years, In Review Online is now my main pipeline for getting my work into the wider world. (Granted, I am usually too busy to pitch stories or hit up editors, so if anyone on here has any tips or suggestions, I'd certainly appreciate it.)

...

Maborosi (Koreeda Hirokazu, 1995)

BY REQUEST: Maxwell S.

I'm not sure exactly how long ago I first saw Maborosi, since I only have screening logs going back to 2001. I am fairly sure it was the second Kore...

Priscilla (Sofia Coppola, 2023)

Although I found Priscilla rote and rather tedious, I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be the film of Coppola's that gains admirers in subsequent decades. It is a distillation of the direc...

Origin (Ava DuVernay, 2023)

Okay, so Origin is not a good film. There are a lot of things wrong with it. But it is also a very weird film.

I have not read Isabel Wilkerson's book, so I am unable to speak to the nuanc...

Good One (India Donaldson, 2024)

Above is the lone film still available for India Donaldson's Sundance premiere Good One. This is unfortunate, because I want to talk about a very specific scene at the start of the film's final ...

Lorang's Way (David and Judith MacDougall, 1977)

As usual, in my Writing 1302 courses we are studying documentary form. Since the students have to write a final research paper, I find it useful for them to examine documentaries, good and bad, in order ...

don't blow it in the vector (Richard Sides, 2014)

BY REQUEST: Nicki Duval

If I had been seduced, or even intrigued, by the music under consideration in this lo-fi doc, I might've been able to overlook its formal and technical shor...

Selection Time Again

I did the lottery a bit different this time. Since Patreon now allows unpaid subscribers (who are pretty much just alerted when I post something), I decided to include them in the drawing, since who know...

Captain Elliott's Circle (Jake Barningham, 2023)

BY REQUEST: Daniel Gorman

If we take the position that essay films are essentially like written essays, only using visual and auditory input as part of their argumentative structur...

Black Girl (Ousmane Sembène, 1966)

It seems that Black Girl, Ousmane Sembène's debut featurette, is destined to be his consensus masterpiece. While the cynical streak in me wonders whether Black Girl's brevity plays a r...

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (Kelly Fremon Craig, 2023)

Ideologically, the polar opposite of Air, although perhaps the comparison is unfair. But where the Nike film mobilized and fetishized the past to release endorphins of nostalgia, Are You The...