ESSAYS
September 28, 2010
Wong Kar-Wai is considered influential. In the Mood for Love (2000) was a big commercial success for him. How does it compare to Wong Kar-Wai’s other work?
March 22, 2010
Argentina has one of the most impressive cinematography in the world. Within that cinema, Fernando E. Solanas is a director of seminal importance. In his essay, Towards a Third cinema, Solanas and his co-writer, Octavio Getino, galvanize the overall revolutionary ideas of the time into the concept of a decolonization cinema, denouncing the weak, liberal arts that have, up until […]
October 1, 2010
The transatlantic slave trade was one of the most disruptive acts in history, separating Africans from their backgrounds, traditions, and identities. This has had a significant impact on diaspora films.
March 22, 2010
It was a pleasant surprise to see Alice doesn’t live here anymore. Is it a feminist film? Can a male filmmaker look at a woman through a female perspective?
March 26, 2010
he City and the Dogs, based on the popular novel of the same name by Mario Vargas Llosa, is an allegory of power in South America.
June 3, 2011
“Most critics really don’t get it.”, as they say. I feel compelled to respond to the casual filmgoers who don't understand the critic’s perspective.
October 1, 2010
In Come Drink With Me, King Hu considers each of the director’s tools, using camera movement differently than editing or the wide-screen space.
September 28, 2010
Hou Hsiao Hsien’s depiction of life in Flowers of ShanghaÏ explores the inherent contradictions in the era’s Chinese society.
July 24, 2011
The world is whole beyond human knowing. -Wendell Berry The Tree of Life, by renowned director Terrence Malick, is years in the making. Its history starts even before Malick’s previous film, The New World, was distributed in 2005. After generating a substantial amount of ink in the media, and hot on the heels of the film’s highly publicized win of […]
September 28, 2010
David Ehrenstein condemns melodramas like Coming Home for perpetuating the illusion that they can affect social change instead of creating real change.
October 1, 2010
What is independent cinema? Critics and film scholars have wrestled with a definition of independent for most of cinema’s existence.
March 22, 2010
What I found most interesting in The World Of Apu is how much the representation of India came so close to my vision of Haiti, my native country.