The Lighthorsemen (1987)
An excellent, visually ravishing Australian World War I film with an absolutely electrifying extended climax.
I remember everything: The many closures of Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name
Through an abundance of visual examples, a guide to the film’s final scenes, revealing how not only its characters but the film itself is striving to achieve closure.
How singular confrontations embody goodness and achieve universality: Ziad Doueiri’s The Insult
«Because The Insult does not pretend to produce a message and only deals with the drama of individuals, it convokes the Lebanese history only through singular lives and makes us to bodily engage with some of its perspectives.»
For Superhero Movies
«Despite the long history of sexism and racism in every aspect of cinema, there are still people who write about film for a living who are only now realizing that representation matters.»
Vitaly Mansky’s Putin’s Witnesses exposes the kingmakers who killed democracy
Karlovy Vary 2018: «Is Putin charismatic? On the basis of a cursory appraisal we would surely say ‘No’ but we would just as surely be dead wrong – and quite possibly also dead.»
Tim Robbins’s answer to Bullyboy ‘Biff’ Trump: We’ll take our modified DeLoreans right back to the progressive future we deserve!
Karlovy Vary 2018: Tim Robbins used the opportunity of receiving the President’s Award for his ‘contribution to world cinema’ to issue a rousing metaphorical call to arms for artists everywhere.
Midnight Sun Film Festival’s note of melancholy, and the enduring spirit of movies
Midnight Sun 2018: They say ‘out of darkness cometh light,’ but can times of adversity such as ours really breed great films? Let alone change the world? Well, if it can happen anywhere, it will be here, at Sodankylä’s famous Midnight Sun Film Festival (MSFF).
The Sad Tomorrow that Follows the Sprightly Ball: Max Ophüls’ The Earrings of Madame de…
«Critics often confused Ophüls’ decadent sets, pretty belle époque settings and the technical wizardry of his mobile camera with empty style, superficiality, even snobbishness.»
Painful but necessary: Erik Poppe’s U – July 22
«What has shaped our perception of 22 July, of what happened, what it was like, and what these incidents of terrorism have meant for us and our country?»
Humanising the spectacle of fascism: Golden Dawn Girls
TIFF 2018: «For all its flaws, Golden Dawn GIrls nonetheless represents a remarkable achievement, a work of courage and skill. It’s great virtue, I believe, is in humanising the spectacle of fascism.»
There is no simple solution: Per Fugelli – siste resept
TIFF 2018: «There is no more essential part of life, yet we prefer to see it and think about it as little as possible. In this respect, the film poses an important question: Is our flight from death also a kind of flight from life?»
Joachim Trier’s Thelma, Part III: The epilepsy test
We walk through the epilepsy test sequence shot by shot, the film’s most impressive segment, a controlled cacophony of images and sound, presented with contemplative intensity.