French Wartime Noir ‘Strangers in the House’ Haunts
Whether as a star vehicle, a Simenon mystery, a wartime allegory, or merely a studio product, Strangers in the House is a rewarding French film that’s gone largely unnoticed.
drama
American History X’s Eerily Prescient Take on Today’s Neo-Nazis
Tony Kaye’s 1998 crime film American History X connect today’s Neo-Nazi hatred back to poisons long carried by Americans, dating back to the country’s original sin of slavery.
Psychological Thriller ‘Saltburn’ Is a Feast for Depraved Eyes
To describe Saltburn as a sexed-up The Talented Mr. Ripley for millennials would be to reduce this aesthetically and symbolically complex film to a two-bit aphorism, but it’s a good start.
The Queer World of Gregg Araki’s Films
Campy, surreal, and even “trauma”-inducing, the queer world of Gregg Araki’s smart, challenging, and colorfully eccentric films seduce.
Fluid Dynamics: Sexual Displacement in Billy Wilder’s ‘The Apartment’
Billy Wilder’s most savage of American comedies, The Apartment, skewers corporate culture and patriarchal structures while challenging viewers to read its spills and overflows as more than just accidents.
The Dance and the Duel in Silent Epic ‘The Spanish Dancer’
Somewhere amid the swigging and carousing in restored silent film The Spanish Dancer it’s love at first eyeball for Don Cesar and Maritana
Actor Aidan Gillen on His Role in Noir Love Letter to Dublin, ‘Barber’
Irish actor Aidan Gillen talks about his lead role, and the freedom given to him to define his character, in Fintan Connolly’s Dublin-set modern noir, Barber.
Camp and the Hyperreal Telenovela in Almodóvar’s ‘All About My Mother’
In All About My Mother, Pedro Almodóvar leverages hyperreality through a camp lens to narrate a story that is as rich in theatricality as it is in the nuanced emotionality of the dream.
A Woman’s War Is Never Done: Wojciech Has’ ‘How to Be Loved’
A telling scene in Wojciech Has’ How to Be Loved comments on how a woman’s viewpoint must be injected into male-created art without permission.
The Pull of Christian Sparkes’ Mystery ‘The King Tide’
Director Christian Sparkes and actors Clayne Crawford and Alix West Lefler discuss the mystery The King Tide during its World Premiere at TIFF 2023.
Director Jared Moshé on Sci-fi Film Aporia’s Moral Ambiguity
Following Aporia’s world premiere at Fantasia, director Jared Moshé talks about leaving his audience grappling with moral ambiguity.
The Claustrophobic Drama in ‘In the Name of the Father’ Still Haunts
The claustrophobic atmosphere in biographical crime drama In the Name of the Father creates a world where evil actions are made more remorseless by the silence surrounding them.