Review: Nora Fingscheidt’s ‘System Crasher’
“Directed by Nora Fingscheidt, ‘System Crasher (Systemsprenger)’ features a tremendous central performance from Helena Zengel, along with superb use of editing and colour.”
World Cinema Project: Beyond the Bounds of Narrative – ‘Limite’ and ‘Mysterious Object at Noon’
“Abstract and disjointed, the narrative of ‘Mysterious Object at Noon’ is progressively piecemeal, and what occurs in ‘Limite’ is even more inconclusive.”
Technology and Anxiety in Film Noir
“Channeled through science and machines, good ol’ American ‘know-how’ had helped win the war, save democracy and crush tyranny. It’s understandable that a similar story would percolate through to the small-scale conflicts of cops and criminals.”
12 Angry Films: Sidney Lumet on Justice #10 – ‘A Stranger Among Us’
“As a chronicler of the justice system in a dozen or more films, Lumet is intimately concerned with the ways in which it represses individual thought and fails to live up to its supposedly defining principles.”
Movement and Melancholy in Michael Mann’s ‘Miami Vice’
“In the cinema of Michael Mann, romance comes fast or not at all, often smothered by the anonymous network of mankind itself or maybe just your job.”
Review: Safy Nebbou’s ‘Who You Think I Am’
“Stories of older women emotionally manipulating younger acquaintances remain commonplace, but Nebbou’s film manages to find something genuinely human beneath tired hagsploitation tropes.”
Review: Neasa Hardiman’s ‘Sea Fever’
“In these increasingly confusing times, taking solace anywhere we can is more important than ever, and it’s impressively weird, intelligent movies like ‘Sea Fever’ that offer such comfort.”
Why Criticism: Not Quite the Apocalypse
“In Australia, our cinematic art has been trying to shake us from apathy for 50 years.”
‘Finding Yingying’: A Search for Answers to an Unanswerable Situation
“‘Finding Yingying’ doesn’t try to offer answers that it can’t manifest in reality, and instead allows the legacy of its subject to lead the way, through intimate diary entries, by pondering the important questions of who we want to be, for each other and for our communities.”
Eliza Hittman’s ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’ Releases Digitally
“Hittman’s third feature continues to demonstrate the talents, sensibilities and cinematic evolution of a first-rate writer-director…”
Review: Romas Zabarauskas’ ‘The Lawyer’
“‘The Lawyer’ doesn’t fully grapple with its weighty white saviour theme, and ends up becoming as simplified as what it was setting out to subvert.”
Joy in the City: On Jacques Tati’s ‘PlayTime’
“It’s not difficult to see how PlayTime’s jubilant finale — with its invocation to fashion the city to its occupants’ sense of fun, desires and needs — is perhaps Tati’s most profound statement of his participatory cinema.”
Review: Malgorzata Szumowska’s ‘The Other Lamb’
“The female gaze is strong in ‘The Other Lamb,’ lovingly capturing Cassidy’s delicate, open features particularly when they begin twisting into something resembling anger…”
Money Is the Game: The Strange Journey of ‘The Magic Christian’
“‘The Magic Christian’ cries out to be re-visited. For all the cultural specificity of the novel and film, Grand remains a strikingly modern figure.”
Review: Midge Costin’s ‘Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound’
“‘Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound’ often turns its ears to previously unheard nooks and crannies that will light a fire in the next generation of world-class film artists.”
World Cinema Project: Persistence of Vision – ‘Dry Summer’ & ‘Law of the Border’
“‘Dry Summer’ and ‘Law of the Border’ remain available as fascinating, engaging documents of a national cinema often forgotten.”
Review: Ashley Eakin’s ‘Single’
“More than ever, it’s crucial to be more cognizant about the complexities of social situations, certainly when speaking to, or speaking about, people with disabilities.”
‘The Green Fog’: Guy Maddin and the Johnsons Visit Alfred Hitchcock
“‘The Green Fog’ is another shining example of how easy it can be to disappear in the silver screen labyrinth. These mirrors and rhymes of familiar sights, looks, places, actions and themes form the basis of how we experience narrative filmmaking.”
Why Criticism: The Race to Problematize Bittersweet Horror Endings
“In order to fully engage with horror films, it’s important to look at the monster and the world that’s being upended by that monster.”
The Cinematic Stylings of The Weeknd
“Many pop artists, both past and present, take cinema as inspiration in crafting their sound, but few modern performers have created music videos that are as truly distinctive and influential as The Weeknd’s collective videography.”