Hai Phuong hurts people for a living. A debt collector in rural Can Tho, she earns her keep beating up pig farmers and street grocers who missed their payments to loan sharks. When she fights, she fights dirty, tearing at ears and…
The Film Canon: Hitchcock the Paranoiac Meets Highsmith the Misanthrope in Strangers on a Train (1951)
When Patricia Highsmith left the theater after seeing Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of her debut novel Strangers on a Train, several thoughts flew through her mind, the only reportedly positive one being her admiration for Robert Walker’s performance as her alcoholic,…
A Great Lamp, and the Salvation of Camaraderie Through Cinema
In early 2017, director Saad Qureshi called his friend Donald Monroe and confessed he was feeling suicidal. “Donald,” he pleaded, “if we don’t make a film right now, I’m going to kill myself.” Donald, a cinematographer, agreed on the spot.…
Mega Time Squad is a Mega Time Waste
An action/comedy/fantasy whatsit, Tim van Dammen’s Mega Time Squad follows a gormless small-time gangster named John (Anton Tennet) in a podunk, no-horse New Zealand town of a few thousand people who hits upon the genius idea of robbing his egotistical, psychopathic…
Film Canon: Moi, Un Noir (1958)
“These young people are torn between tradition and mechanization, between Islam and alcohol. They are faithful to their beliefs, but idolize modern stars of boxing and cinema.” Feeling stifled by his intellectual Parisian upbringing, Jean Rouch first came to Africa…
The Despairing Beauty of Stasis : A sampler of the first Iranian Film Festival New York
If there was one through line in the IFC’s first (and hopefully not last) annual Iranian Film Festival New York, it would be the idea of artistic stasis—of artists either incapable or not allowed to create. Many of the films…
Welcome to Marwen Movie Review: An embarrassing disaster all around
Who was the Hollywood screenwriter, producer, or bigwig who saw Jeff Malmberg’s Marwencol (2010)—a bruising, heart-breaking film about trauma —and thought yes, this will make a perfect dramedic fantasy crowd-pleaser. It boggles the mind and the reasoning bits of the…
