blog
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I’ve been known to waffle back and forth in picking my favorite Cassavettes film, whether it’s Love Streams or Opening Night, for varying reasons, I seem to always land on Minnie and Moskowitz. It feels like his most personal film, showcasing an unconventional approach to storytelling, much of its dialogue resonates, and the highly skilled ability of both Gena Rowlands Read more
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What really pisses me off about ROSEMARY’S BABY is this woman’s lack of instinct. Naivety strips her of any potential in kicking ass over her abusers. She’s trusting, loyal, submissive, accommodating of everyone’s needs before herself only to realize she’s a victim plagued by an unruly bunch of soulless creeps. What starts off as a Read more
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It’s a dawning in the new age of the final girl in a genre that never dies. Everyone has something to be afraid of. Everyone has to face fear at some point, but in the mean time we can be gratifyingly satisfied by the suspense it creates in tormenting our psyches into somber submission. I Read more
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When I read about French, filmmaker Julia Ducournau’s RAW last year, I intrinsically knew it be something I’d find fascinating to study. Mind you, I’m still studying it. It’s disgusting, grotesque, where all the horror lies within the flesh, blood, hair, flakey skin, eyeballs, basically your whole anatomy making it narrowly bearable. Its controversy is Read more
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I had my first Cinefamily experience last week. I had the pleasurable chance seeing my first Lina Wertmüller film, LOVE & ANARCHY and it was unique sitting among other cinephiles. It’s one of the great experiences of sitting among an audience listening to them laugh collectively at such gut wrenching hilarity whether it be Read more
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Where do I even begin with Liliana Cavani’s 1974 THE NIGHT PORTER as the core foundation of the film’s subject matter is about a sadomasochistic relationship? The core of this story lays heavily in the tragic isolation between Lucia, a Holocaust survivor (played by Charlotte Rampling) and Max her former Nazi torturer (played by Dirk Read more
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Steve McQueen’s HUNGER (2008) is a powerful, meditative work of art peering into the 1981 Irish hunger strike in the Maze Prison spearheaded by Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender). What’s so extraordinary yet painfully captivating about this film is the explicit images McQueen drives into the heart of the narrative. Aside from the 17-minute-long dialogue between Read more
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Can you imagine reliving the last year of your life through a series of events and moments within a minute of time? Sounds bizarre and unimaginable but that’s the beauty and mystery behind the concept of time and in Alain Resnais’s 1968 film JE T’AIME, JE T’AIME (I Love You, I Love You) It’s a Read more
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My first Catherine Breillat film and I chose her most complex, controversial, 2004 Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie de l’enfer ) which was, adapted by the director from her novel Pornocratie. Its groundbreaking, and formidably genius, as BBC film critic, Jamie Russell put it an example of “feminist existential porn”. It has also been hailed as Read more
MARISSA THE CINEPHILE 