NYFF Currents (Short Takes 2)
Humongous (Aya Kawazoe, 2020)
One of this year's stealthier entries in the NYFF Currents short film series, Humongous looks like it might be a mere narrative doodle, but i...
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, which explored the appropriation of Michael...
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 World -- what on earth does? -- Stump the ...
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 clear-eyed, Siberia is a work that I hones...
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 civic office, or a museum. But we see numerous larg...
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 lineup is comprised of a rather feeble selection of al...
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 would be....Andrei Konchalovsky. He has already won th...
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 am not going near a movie theater to see Tene...
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, choosing to look more carefully at the objects t...
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 Ernie's piece -- his first new release in several year...
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 prune away the parts of the apparatus (such as an ...
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 films." There is quite a lot to unpack in any giv...
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 a feeling this has to do with Patreon's new tax c...
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 relationship can be articulated. The end result, as you migh...
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 shadow of that recent triumph. Like Experimenter...
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 targeting the entire history of BBC prestige prod...
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 Tenet begins in earnest, there will be (or ou...
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 that." Instead, she started eating, taking lots o...
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 Patreon content up very soon. Thanks for your pati...
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 much played it by the numbers. For a film about a ...
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 out into a relatively straightforward proposition. ...
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 contain a section of short, random news stories of...
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 while it doesn't exactly spoil Da-Rin's debut featu...
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 perfect of a film it actually is. If First Cow...
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"Old Dolio is so old..."
"How old is she?!"
"She's so old that when she was a...
2020-08-04 19:54:49 +0000 UTC View PostClementine (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 that cohort, Julian Schnabel would have the talen...
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. In it, Frampton takes a completely negligible passa...
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 considered to be unwatchable. But now, I have a new...
2020-08-03 21:17:20 +0000 UTC View Post