An escaped mental patient (Suzanne Fletcher) places stones in the mouths of bodies she finds laid out by a roadside accident. A woman translating an ancient Chinese scroll sees her fingertips … Continue reading The Ghost of an Idea: The Films of Sara Driver
Take Blade Runner and draw a line from the 80s replicant noir to the 90s non-consensual machine-induced hallucinations of The Matrix. Somewhere on that line there’s a node, running backwards … Continue reading Haunted Future: The Anime Brilliance of Mamoru Oshii
Just this past June 4th, Chester Nez died. He was the last of the Navajo code talkers, one of twenty-nine heroes during WWII who developed a special code out of … Continue reading A New Hope for the Navajo: Star Wars Strikes Back
There’s no Aunt Jemima. Not a real one anyway. The idea came from a song in old minstrel shows, that homey old aunt often played by a white man in … Continue reading Balms Away: Burt’s Buzz Homes In On An Unlikely Icon
Martin Scorsese got his first exposure to Polish cinema at film school. Its heady stew of Italian neo-realism, French New Wave, and German Expressionism was a quintessential mix of European … Continue reading Marty Picks Polski: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema
Apocalypticism is all the rage, again, as it has been. We just can’t get enough of the world falling apart around us. Maybe cuz there’s a few wee inklings we’re … Continue reading On the Road Warrior with Terry Hayes
Claude Ridder wanted to end it all. Too bad he couldn’t get it right, a bullet fired into his chest merely landing him in hospital, one more botched suicide left to … Continue reading Over and Over: Time-Traveling Classic Je t’aime, je t’aime
There was no magic in the timing of William Friedkin’s 1977 release Sorcerer. An unusual thriller about four men transporting trucks full of nitroglycerin over treacherous jungle terrain to extinguish … Continue reading Sorcerer: A Forgotten Classic Blows Up Again?
Young Luke: That was great! Big! Loud! Old Luke: Uh huh. That’s a sequel for you. Rio 2 brings back the original’s quirky and engaging ensemble for a new round … Continue reading Rio 2: The Bigger, The Morer
Imagine this world isn’t the only world. This life isn’t your only life. There are others, variations, subtle shifts from one to the next but you don’t see them. Time … Continue reading The Curious Case of Robert LePage
I’ve already written two pieces on TIFF’s Paul Verhoeven retrospective (“Agent Provocateur: The Films of Paul Verhoeven” and “Comedy of Eros: Verhoven’s Lurid Pair”). I never figured I was a … Continue reading Starship Troopers, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bugs
The cultural excavations of the 80s have reached near the bottom of that embarrassing crevasse (parachute pants! purple reigns!). It’s only logical then that our voracious fashion-media-money machine is spreading … Continue reading Comedy of Eros: Verhoeven’s Lurid Pair
