‘Amrum’ Presents Wartime Distress with Visual Grace
Fatih Akin’s visually beautiful wartime drama, Amrum, turns a child’s survival into a memory handed from one talented filmmaker to another.
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‘The Midnight: Shadows’ Renders Nostalgia’s Dangers in Neon
In their music and now their graphic novel, The Midnight: Shadows, this synthwave duo weaves a distinct emotional identity around the narcotic effects of nostalgia.
Vigdis Hjorth’s ‘Repetition’ and the Rhythm of Clinical Work
Vigdis Hjorth’s Repetition is as concerned with repression and the unconscious as it is a manifesto on the power of writing.
Melissa Auf der Maur’s Memoir Mirrors 1990s Rock Attitude and Excess
Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur’s memoir goes beyond clichés to offer a truly compelling perspective on the bohemian community of 1990s rock.
Alice Coltrane: Conjurer of the Majestic
Andy Beta’s Alice Coltrane biography, Cosmic Music, is an excellent work about this forward-thinking and often misunderstood musician.
‘Sun Ra: Do the Impossible’ Achieves the Seemingly Impossible
In its gorgeous embroidery of color, sound, and thoughtful reflection, Sun Ra documentary Do the Impossible achieves the seemingly impossible.
7 French Noirs for Those Long Cold Winter Nights
The French were making their own postwar brand of dark, downbeat, terse, vivid, chic, and cynical criminal melodramas before anyone ever heard the term “French Noir”.
MGM’s ‘Lovely to Look At’ Lives Up to It’s Title
MGM musical Lovely to Look At is gorgeous stuff; the colors bleed so richly and profusely that they spread across the frames like melted crayons.
Mule Boy’s Paratactic Storytelling Method Carries Weight
Like Cormac McCarthy, Andrew Krivak breaks complex actions, narrated in strings of independent clauses, into their elemental parts in Mule Boy.
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Iconic 1960s ‘It Girl’ Jane Birkin Finally Gets Some Respect
Biographer Marisa Meltzer accentuates the inner depth of her talented subject in her book, It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin.
Pantheon’s House of High-Tech Mirrors
The post-human speculative sci-fi series Pantheon asks, can humanity recognize itself in its digital reflection?
Three Robert Hossein Films Evoke Harold Pinter
The three Robert Hossein films in Wicked Games exhibit gender-based power struggles and existentialist tendencies with a touch of absurdism.