Ooh, this was a toughie. Every once and awhile someone asks me what film might be a good place to start exploring the work of Straub/Huillet, and I usually tell them Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach<...
2019-06-25 22:42:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Maybe critics and academics have gotten what we wanted, and now it's a Pyrrhic victory. After decades of decrying the God-like truth claims of standard, "transparent" documentary, we have achieved a glut...
2019-06-25 00:41:41 +0000 UTC View Post
Promising as a debut film, but mostly a trifle, this played Rotterdam and ACID and is the sort of film that you can typically expect to round out the Contemporary World Cinema lineup at TIFF, where you y...
2019-06-23 23:59:43 +0000 UTC View Post
Much silly comedy is wrung from the fact that Amy uses a stuffed panda instead of her hands to masturbate. But far more subversive from a kink standpoint is the fact that, during the Barbie hallucination...
2019-06-23 01:46:36 +0000 UTC View Post
One of the reasons I so admire Kevin Everson's films is the determinedly "minor" nature of his short works. Each of them seems to represent a snapshot of one small aspect of African-American life (contem...
2019-06-22 19:50:44 +0000 UTC View Post
This might be a film emergency. You need to watch this, like, now.
Ken Jacobs has been working for years now on his current "Eternalism" method, which is a digital mutation of his Nervous System fi...
2019-06-22 02:21:39 +0000 UTC View Post
One of the consistent joys of previewing the work included in the annual San Francisco Crossroads Festival is the inevitable discovery of new talent. But one thing I've realized over time is that, for th...
2019-06-20 02:25:35 +0000 UTC View Post
Of course it was a commission. How did I not see that?
At first I was quite taken with Emigholz's latest film, since, in a way, it struck me as a continuation of the unusual path he took w...
2019-06-19 21:16:11 +0000 UTC View Post
This article made be hungry for some fried cala-molly.
2019-06-18 03:15:43 +0000 UTC View Post
This will, alas, have to be a tentative evaluation, since the screener I watched was unusually substandard, and the film in question is one of particular delicacy in terms of light and shadow. In fact, I...
2019-06-17 23:44:56 +0000 UTC View Post
One of Heise's more purely observational films, Consequence is a 65-minute study of a crematorium. It is almost wordless. There are a few brief conversations in the background, but comprehending...
2019-06-17 02:37:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Some artists, like Beatrice Gibson, get more interesting over time, partly because of developments in their work, but also because you learn to read their signals and more fully occupy their world. Unfor...
2019-06-16 05:39:07 +0000 UTC View Post
While I was a bit ambivalent, and even perplexed, by some earlier Gibson films (such as 2014's F For Fibonacci and 2015's Solo for Rich Man), I have been duly impressed with her last tw...
2019-06-15 21:42:32 +0000 UTC View Post
More Harmony, less melody.
The Beach Bum is, in its own comically irritating way, a complete success when Korine and Matthew McConaghey work together to create an all-enveloping atmosphere...
2019-06-14 21:26:36 +0000 UTC View Post
Well, I have to take a somewhat unexpected trip, so I will be out of pocket for a week. I am going to try to get at least one post up here while I'm on the road, but if I fail to give you your money's wo...
2019-06-07 22:18:25 +0000 UTC View Post
This review contains minor spoilers. The tabula rasa types should steer clear. That means you, Mike.
As of this moment (June 2019), Serge...
2019-06-04 17:09:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Over the next few days, I am going to be prioritizing watching some of the 2019 films from Cannes that I now have access to. However, I also have a backlog of 2019 commercial releases to deal with, not a...
2019-06-02 21:00:33 +0000 UTC View Post
Never not interesting, Ferrara's take on the final days of Pier Paolo Pasolini (Willem Dafoe) nevertheless falls squarely into the "interesting failure" column. It's mainly, I think, a problem of reveren...
2019-06-02 19:22:14 +0000 UTC View Post
On twitter earlier today, my homie 2019-05-28 03:13:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey, remember when Guy Maddin delivered a full-on brother vs. brother melodrama in just under seven minutes?
That was awesome.
Now, I don't mention Maddin (or The Heart of the World)...
2019-05-26 02:43:06 +0000 UTC View Post
While doing a little research on Suleiman's latest film It Must Be Heaven, I came across this early work I'd never seen. I was vaguely aware of it, as it turned up in Video Data Bank and Facets ...
2019-05-25 00:37:29 +0000 UTC View Post
I mean really. Lars von Trier makes an admittedly stupid joke, and Thierry Fremaux throws him out of Cannes for seven years, but the festival happily rolls out the red carpet for a guy accused of sexual ...
2019-05-24 04:56:32 +0000 UTC View Post
This helped Kechiche secure some funding, but I guess auctioning off the Palme d'Or made up the rest. No matter: come Saturday, he'll have another!
2019-05-24 01:08:20 +0000 UTC View Post...subscribers, for the multiple postings. I have discovered, painfully, that Patreon is indeed not a blog, and goes well out of its way to protect the (perceived) proprietary rights of others. All I wanted to do was make a Cannes joke, by cutting immediately to Sir Mix-A-Lot and a bunch...
2019-05-24 00:17:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Ghanaian filmmaker Akosua Adoma Owusu is gradually building one of the most vital bodies of work in the so-called avant-garde. Like many of the best experimental filmmakers working today, Owusu's work is...
2019-05-22 04:22:17 +0000 UTC View Post
Amidst the various reviews and reports coming out of Cannes this year, I am noticing the lack of one specific, frequent lament. No one has claimed that any film in Un Certain Regard or the Quinzaine rightfully "belonged in Competition." Not the Bonello. Not the Dumont. Certainly not the Herzog. <...
2019-05-21 21:42:20 +0000 UTC View Post
What if, in a year with over a dozen serious contenders, they awarded the Queer Palme to Young Ahmed? I think you get where I'm coming from.
2019-05-21 16:02:32 +0000 UTC View Post
[NOTE: This is something of a subscribers-only preview, I guess, of part of my next article for Cinema Scope, which will be about Thomas Heise's documentaries. It seemed like this was a good place to sha...
2019-05-21 04:54:22 +0000 UTC View Post
This jarringly experimental narrative film from a relative newcomer (this is only his second feature) marks Burak Cevik as someone to watch. Although, in the end, his reach exceeds his grasp, I've never ...
2019-05-19 19:14:42 +0000 UTC View Post
There are films that I watched when they were new, and although I may have liked them well enough at the time, they didn't strike me as anything particularly special. But then, a strange thing happens. T...
2019-05-19 05:00:19 +0000 UTC View Post