Film Reviews
Ambivalence, not sex, is the innermost dirty secret that Freud managed to flush into the open. We love and we hate, sure, but often wind up mingling extreme emotions toward anyone to whom we are intensely linked, and in varying degrees and guises. The exploration of this fickle core within our troublesome selves, and the…
Read Full Article...Something in the Air: Assayas’ Portrait of Political and Personal Upheaval Post May ‘68 France
In May 1968 France was roiling with mass demonstrations, student occupations, strikes, and riots. Initiated by a student revolt–more social and cultural (against convention and authority) than political–the students were then joined by workers in an assault on France’s most venerable institutions. Occurring during a time of relative economic prosperity, this upheaval turned into the…
Read Full Article...Hollywood in the past often depicted aging characters in stereotyped terms: the grumpy old codgers played by Walter Brennan; kindly grandmas played by Spring Byington; founts of aged wisdom played by actors like Sam Jaffe (today played by Hal Holbrook); or the idiosyncratic, freewheeling elderly women played by Ruth Gordon. And the films usually made…
Read Full Article...The UK National Union of Mineworkers’ (NUM) strike of 1984-85 was an industrial action that could have changed the movement of history. Victory meant not only an opportunity to secure the production of coal and the staying of pit closures, but a fundamental threat to the success of Margaret Thatcher’s economic reforms. Failure, as we…
Read Full Article...Richard Linklater, the writer/director of the strikingly witty, verbal, and poignant Before Trilogy, shot his most recent film—the understated epic Boyhood —in 39 days, and in regular brief intervals over the course of 12 years. Boyhood’s prime focus is on the development of an ordinary-—bike riding, video game playing—dreamy six-year-old Texas boy, Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) into an 18-year-old…
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Latest Issue
2024: Vol. 23, No. 2
Latest Issue
2024: Vol. 23, No. 2
Between The Issues
