Features
A Few Great Pumpkins
The Birds, Lake Mungo, Diabolique, Dead Ringers, Island of Lost Souls, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Martin
Here, queerness is not figured along the lines of sexual orientation or gender identity so much as the otherness that comes with being differently abled and, even more immediately, with a sense of loss.
To understand the origins of the Screenplay film festival, the annual highlight of the Shetland arts calendar that Hubbard continues to run with eyebrow-raising drive and stamina, it is useful to note that Shetland is historically (and understandably) an island of enthusiastic bookworms.
While the selection includes both fiction and nonfiction films, the slant toward documentaries is pronounced: this year, out of the 15 films presented in the international competition, the vast majority were documentaries or fiction/nonfiction hybrids.
Years in Review
Best ESPN Miniseries, Best Ending, Best Hitchcockian Cameo, Foulest Trailer, Biggest Missed Opportunity, We Don’t Need Another Superhero, Best Musical, Most Underrated Overrated Double Oscar Winner, Scariest Movie, Worst Film Criticism, and more
Three documentary shorts in First Look 2017’s Strange but True: Shorts Program II work in tandem to paint a portrait of a particularly American brand of hope; it is tender, a little tragic, and it does not come in HD.
“The words written in the script are really just for my reference. I never show the actors the screenplay. I find I always get better results with the dialogue if we do some improvisation and run through the scene a few times.”
The unusual, unsparing, and sometimes leering candor of Helmut Berger, Actor is made possible by the fact that the film’s subject seems to be totally absent any self-censoring mechanism. His substance intake may have some part in this.
The screen, apart from some video scan lines and the usually-but-not-always present image of a refugee boat carrying 13 men, is little more than a blue rectangle, the Mediterranean Sea on a particularly sunny day.
This new program of international avant-garde film and video, she curated for the Museum of the Moving Image, celebrates older works (most of them forgotten) while placing a strong emphasis on the new.
The most intriguing draw is a 38-minute Eternalist collage of footage taken by New Yorkers on the day of the World Trade Center attack.
Years in Review
Deadpool, Jackie, Hell or High Water, The Birth of a Nation, Lo and Behold, The Neon Demon, Krisha, Bad Moms, Nocturnal Animals, Midnight Special, Joshy
Transporting the viewer into a country setting where a unique way of life is gradually disappearing, Boone comes with no expository voiceover, respects no dramaturgy, and excludes any interaction between filmmaker and subjects.
Films as disparate as Altered States, Nosferatu, 1984, The Night of the Hunter, Repulsion, Tetsuo the Iron Man, M, and Sette note in nero are placed on the same emotional plane, each an evocation of all-purpose, free-floating, indefinable anxiety.