The Crashing of the Wave: ‘Six in Paris’
“Despite being an uneven grouping hardly representative of the best these filmmakers had to offer, ‘Six in Paris’ is an interesting capsule of moments in time and space.”
‘A Woman Is a Woman’: Falling in Love with Karina, Godard and the Wave
“It is Karina who embodied the freedom, fascination and the unpredictability that would define the French New Wave. It is Karina who made so many fall in love — with her and with cinema as an extraordinary, exultant medium.”
This Is Not a Book Review: On William Brown’s ‘Non-Cinema: Global Digital Film-making and the Multitude’
Yoana Pavlova on William Brown’s ‘Non-Cinema: Global Digital Film-making and the Multitude’
An Interview with Independent Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi
“I like failure because it’s spiritualizing. We think we know what will make us happy, but we’re usually wrong. Failure forces us to rethink our salvational strategies.”
Film Theory Vérité: Introduction – On Lewis Hyde’s ‘The Gift’
“Even when it sparks anger, fear, silence or screams, the response is a gift, and what we do with that gift is integral to the future of criticism and filmmaking in general.”
Cinema of Secrets: An Interview with Philippe Garrel
Julia Yepes Interviews Director Philippe Garrel
Vague Visages Writers’ Room: Favorite Halloween Movies
In the Vague Visages Writers’ Room on Facebook, freelancers were asked to comment about their favorite Halloween flicks.
Vague Visages Is FilmStruck: Jeremy Carr on Andrei Tarkovsky’s ‘Solaris’
“The film goes beyond strict and narrow generic classification and touches upon something universal, something profound about undying affection and the unreliability of reality.”
Political and Social Conventions in Jacques Demy’s ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’
“Fifty-three years after initial release, ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ continues to be a formally and contextually innovative French New Wave production; a film that has influenced contemporary directors such as Barry Jenkins, Damien Chazelle and Joachim Trier.”
The Aesthetic and Formal Challenges of Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Contempt’
“‘Contempt’ is a daunting and formally labyrinthine work, calling its own fallibility to question even as it submits completely to the romance of cinema.”
Why Criticism: Thom Andersen and the Critic as a Worker
A Weekly Column on Film Criticism by Justine A. Smith
Piecing Together the Fragments of Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘A Married Woman’
“With ‘A Married Woman,’ Godard appears fully devoted to topical bullet points through an essayistic structure, forgoing conventional narrative, character development or expedient pacing.”
Todd Solondz Offers Surprising Homages to French Filmmakers in ‘Wiener-Dog’
“It can’t help but seem like there was one film about a dog bringing people together in light of troubled times, if only briefly, but then it was decided that there would also be a film about a dog being a prop for stories that his detractors would label as ‘autopilot Solondz.'”
Capitolo 20: Mani in Alto / Marco Bellocchio’s ‘Fists in the Pocket’
A Series on Italian Cinema by Q.V. Hough
Why Criticism: Andrew Sarris vs. Pauline Kael
A Column on Film Criticism by Justine A. Smith
The Dueling Cavalier: Contrasting Effectiveness of the Long Take in ‘The Tribe’ and ‘Birdman’
A Column by Max Bledstein
Locarno 2015: ‘88:88’ (Isiah Medina, 2015)
“The style of 88:88 has been compared to Jean-Luc Godard, specifically his recent projects like Film Socialisme (2010) and Adieu au langage (2014). What sets this film apart from Godard is an intimacy approaching a breach of privacy.”
Film Beat: Cafe Scene from Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Vivre sa vie’
“After my first viewing of ‘Vivre sa vie,’ I closed my laptop, went out and chopped my waist-length mane to a bob. Movies have always had that mysterious power of making me feel as if I have lived all the lives I see on-screen.”
Review: David Gordon Green’s ‘Manglehorn’
“Seldom more than a vehicle for Pacino to exercise his considerable (and still active) talents, Manglehorn is a string of engaging and breathtaking images that, when strung together, become a subdued meandering plot devoid of any real meaning.”
New German Cinema: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s ‘Love is Colder Than Death’
“Basking in drawn-out pauses and uninterrupted tracking shots, Fassbinder strives to make his audience feel a profound discomfort and delights in presenting an errant challenge to his viewers’ integrity.”