A very interesting change of pace for Hopinka, both literally, in terms of the general tempo of the film (more of a steady lento than previous films), and figuratively. In that latter sense, I mean that some of Hopinka's more recent films, such as Anti-Objects, Dislocation Blues 2019-08-13 05:24:56 +0000 UTC View Post
Given the structuralist nature of the work, you might expect Björn Kämmerer's new film Teal to have a nice round number of shots. But nope. It has 204. I can't say that I know exactly why, except that having 204 instead of an even 200 seems to set up the expectation for a clean pattern only ...
2019-08-13 02:43:10 +0000 UTC View Post
A good work of art is often about something. It has an idea about a given topic and perhaps makes a series of propositions about that topic, hopefully in a creative way. But one way that a work of art can achieve greatness is by not simply being about something, not just identifying a...
2019-08-12 09:25:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Unlike so many of the experimental filmmakers who have come out of Austria in recent years, Philipp Fleischmann is not primarily concerned with cinematic perception, the ontological basis for the movies, or problems of signification. Granted, his films tangentially touch on these matters, but Fleischma...
2019-08-12 02:36:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi all, so sorry for the lack of updates, especially after I promised some sneak-peeks into the upcoming avant-garde season. But to be honest, it's been hotter'n hell down here in Houston (avg temp: 99º, some days up to 101º), and I just haven't felt like doing anything. I can't think, I can't write,...
2019-08-11 22:30:50 +0000 UTC View Post
After Ricky D'Ambrose's expansion into feature-length territory with Notes on an Appearance, it's gratifying to see that he is still a master of the short form. There are so few filmmakers who can produce brief narrative works that don't feel like truncated sketches (or worse, advertisements m...
2019-08-07 02:41:22 +0000 UTC View Post
Well folks, if you came here looking for my hot-to-lukewarm take on Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood, you're out of luck. As the debates rage on throughout The Film Twitter and elsewhere amongst the Interwebs, I have not had time to see that particular White Elephant. I've had a lot of work to ...
2019-08-05 01:23:43 +0000 UTC View Post
A Twitter acquaintance of mine, Jeva Lange, wrote a terse but dead-on review of The Souvenir on Letterboxd. She simply remarked, "This is a horror movie." Now, she responded much more positively to <...
2019-08-02 04:38:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Today, while hunting around the Interwebs for recent episodes of the best talk show on TV, I stumbled upon something. A (relatively) new British panel show called There's Something About Movies 2019-07-29 01:37:13 +0000 UTC View Post
"Indulgent" is not an adjective I throw around lightly. As a diehard defender of experimental film, I am all too aware that the world is filled with nitwits and know-nothings to gleefully lob that term at virtually anything that doesn't conform to a shopworn, Sid Field three-act narrative structure. An...
2019-07-27 21:52:37 +0000 UTC View PostI discovered the work of the Mexican filmmaking group Los Ingrávidos last year while previewing films for the Crossroads festival. I discovered their highly impressive Sun Quartet, a suite of films that were not like anything I'd seen in a very long time. Highly political yet fiercely dedicated to a highly unique, challenging aesthetic, the work of Los Ingrávidos combined documentary...
2019-07-26 02:38:50 +0000 UTC View Post
The French title of Non-Fiction is Doubles vies, and the fact that there are essentially two unrelated titles for this film indicates just how fundamentally incoherent it is as a text. There's a certain tedium involved in watching Assayas toggle back and forth between a standard-issue...
2019-07-24 20:47:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Few first-time directors have as many resources at their disposal as Louis Garrel, major French actor, son of legendary director Philippe Garrel. And he certainly used them, co-writing the screenplay with the great Jean-Claude Carrière, bringing on Irina Lubtchansky as D.P., and hiring French cinema a...
2019-07-23 21:14:40 +0000 UTC View Post
I can't speak with any real authority about Lynn Shelton as a director. I wasn't as impressed with her breakout Humpday (2009) as some others were, although I thought the follow-up, Your Sister's Sister (2011) was a very sharp chamber drama that took a potentially crass, sensationalis...
2019-07-22 19:44:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Pedro Almodóvar is like an emotionally unavailable boyfriend. It seems that on the rare occasions that he lets down the guard of his fantastical, melodramatic style and instead gestures toward some kind of self-disclosure, critics swoon as if the director is actually opening up and giving us a peek at...
2019-07-22 03:59:49 +0000 UTC View Post
It took me a few false starts, but I finally sat down with Dan Barnett's new feature film. Barnett, for those who've joined the program already in progress, is a key figure in American avant-garde film who has not really gotten his due, despite being enormously influential for other's in the field -- t...
2019-07-21 05:05:15 +0000 UTC View Post
German-based, Austrian-born experimental filmmaker Lukas Marxt has been an interesting figure for quite awhile now. Where so many of his Viennese colleagues have produced a unique brand of cinema that focuses squarely on the materiality of the filmstrip and the physical manipulation of images, Marxt ha...
2019-07-21 03:35:35 +0000 UTC View Post
So some of you may have noticed that, after all my pontificating and garment-rending, I am back on Twitter. I could be stubborn and stay away as a point of pride, but life is too short for such face-spiting gestures. But I am not exactly jumping in with both feet. I think that the three months away hel...
2019-07-17 00:52:59 +0000 UTC View Post
There's no point denying the overall power and importance of La Flor. Before seeing the film, I jokingly referred to it as a "megalith," and unbeknownst to me, Llinás cites the giant stone structures of antiquity as a source of unexplained power. (This is during Episode Four, when Professor G...
2019-07-15 18:07:14 +0000 UTC View Post
Well past the halfway point of this monster, and I must say I am feeling rather ambivalent. There is a formal elegance underpinning La Flor that seems undeniable. The more I see of Llinás' overall architecture, the clearer it becomes that he has set out to create a cinematic work with the exp...
2019-07-13 14:52:00 +0000 UTC View Post
The art critic and queer theorist Douglas Crimp passed away a few days ago, on July 5, at the age of 74. Douglas was a professor of mine during the nineties, while I was completing a Masters in Art History at the University of Rochester, and we remained in intermittent contact in the years after that. ...
2019-07-11 05:15:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Of course it is entirely too premature for me to say anything too intelligent about La Flor, since I am only in the middle of Section Two (I think). More specifically, I have seen the mummy episode and am in the middle of the Siempreverde / scorpion toxin double plot. But a few things...
2019-07-06 05:33:08 +0000 UTC View Post
“Every day, to earn my daily bread I go to the market where lies are bought. Hopefully I take up my place among the sellers.” (David Ehrlich)
2019-07-06 02:20:04 +0000 UTC View Post
So folks are quitting this Patreon, not exactly in "droves," but with enough regularity to make me think perhaps a change might be in order. My own priorities, as far as movie watching and writing are concerned, may not be 100% conducive to a satisfactory reading experience for the subscriber, and this...
2019-07-05 01:55:24 +0000 UTC View Post
In some respects, this is Geyrhalter's weakest film in quite some time. Whereas the power of his work had always lay in his still, nearly silent images, Earth is quite verbose, featuring brief interviews with numerous men and women involved in the mining, tunneling, and earth-moving industries that the film is profiling. Essentially another cinematic warning flag regarding the unchecke...
2019-07-04 16:00:35 +0000 UTC View Post
Theirs is to win / If it kills them / They're just humans / With wives and children . . .
A beautiful real-life companion piece -slash- corrective to the fictionalizations of First Man, Miller's Apollo 11 is a no-frills piece of nonfiction filmmaking because it lets the...
2019-07-01 09:18:10 +0000 UTC View Post
If you're like me, you find yourself constantly checking in with the websites of various independent film distributors, to see what they have picked up recently, or when a particular film of theirs is going to be released. But it can be hard to remember all the significant ones. So I decided to make a ...
2019-06-29 01:57:47 +0000 UTC View Post
Originally a film I stopped watching at the 30-minute mark, I decided to go back to it upon learning that Ela Bittencourt had written about it in the latest Cinema Scope. I haven't read her piece yet, but considering that Ela felt the film was worth her time and attention, I figured I should at least s...
2019-06-29 00:14:30 +0000 UTC View Post
I had some momentary plans, and then I thought better of it. Here's a sampling of what I chose not to subject you to.
1. An Open Letter to Lights Camera Jackson
After his Booksmart stunt (which, please tell me someone has called him out for ripping off Leonard Malt...
2019-06-27 14:57:53 +0000 UTC View Post