Tag: cinema
The Fabulous Forties: 5 Short Films That Can’t Be Missed
Who decreed that feature films run two hours? Though there may be some organic rationale based on how two hours fits into an evening’s entertainment, there’s no rule that I know of that requires 120 minutes. The very first movies ran about 60 seconds, depending on how fast the camera was cranked, because that’s how…
The 100 Greatest Australian Films: Cinema Down Under
Why write a list of the 100 greatest Australian films? While recently browsing through a book on the history of Australian cinema, it occurred to me that most Australian film buffs and cinephiles actually have a very limited concept of the nation’s cinematic output. Except for those films that first garner significant positive attention internationally,…
A History of the Found Footage Film: The Good, the Bad, and the Box Art
It has been fifteen years since The Blair Witch Project, and the found footage genre has settled into a bit of a rut. It is a very restrictive form, best suited to horror and suspense, and most filmmakers discover eventually that it would be nice to break away from the central conceit that everything the…
Living on the Edge: ‘The Last Patrol’ Offers a Sobering Post-War Trip
It’s hard to call Sebastian Junger’s compelling new documentary, The Last Patrol (2014), an anti-war film … or, for that matter, a pro-war movie. That’s in part because this picture, which kicked off the American Museum of Natural History’s Margaret Mead Film Festival Thursday night, is too textured to peg in a specific hole. The…
Flight of Fancy: ‘Birdman’ Worth Taking Off With, Despite Flaws
Virtuoso filmmaking by Alejandro González Iñárritu. A bravura, Oscar-worthy performance by Michael Keaton. Innovative, feels-like-one-take cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki. You’d think that with all those ingredients, Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) would be an instant masterpiece, pushing director Iñárritu into a very select group of celluloid heroes. Indeed, there are moments in the…