“I find ghosts in Japanese horror much more terrifying. In the standard American horror canon, because a ghost violently attacks you or comes after you, at least you have the chance to fight back… but if they don’t attack you then the best you…
Over the course of his decades-long career, Christian Petzold has come to shape something like a cinema of failure; potently and precisely carving itself from lives immobilized and drowning in the quicksand of historical progress. More than any of his Berlin School contemporaries, time…
Under the guise of complacent nothingness, the characters of Philippe Garrel’s Regular Lovers manage to paradoxically enact and participate in sundry relationships, death drives, drug habits, clashes with authority, and everything in between. The events of May ‘68 sit at the center of the…
If one were to properly date when Pascal Arbez-Nicolas’ cultural ascension commenced — from his humble beginning as a no-name disk jockey, steadily slumming it in France under the moniker of Hustler Pornstar — it would be easy to attribute his rise to an…
In his 1978 book Orientalism, historian and cultural critic Edward Said writes: “Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order…
Tsai Ming-liang’s cinema is primarily concerned with naifs and innocents, usually confronted with complex existential conditions, and with The Wayward Cloud (and arguably 2009’s Face, as well), the director offers a complete radicalization of such binary forces. Here, Tsai continues the narrative of sort-of…
#104: Four Brothers Download episode here. Listen to episode here. Episode Description: This week, Summer Blockbuster!?! gets into the holiday spirit as we take on 2005’s Thanksgiving-set revenge tale Four Brothers, directed by John Singleton. Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andre Benjamin, and Garrett Hedlund star…
If there’s any one quality that defines Cui Jian, it’s that he has never been content to be any one thing. Rock ‘n’ roll didn’t start with Cui — so he had to be a Chinese rock ‘n’ roller, fusing his own national identity…
In 2005’s Tale of Cinema, as in most of Hong Sang-soo’s works, structure is part of the story. The film is split into two halves, the first of which comprises a short film by a director that people keep mentioning (but whom we don’t really…
#7: High Tension Download episode here. Listen to episode here. Episode Description: On this week’s episode we delve into 2005’s High Tension, an extreme horror flick from France directed by Alexandre Aja that was hacked to death in the editing room by Lionsgate. Hell, they even added…
