From Reverence to Spielberg: Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films by Molly Haskell Adrian Schober June 2017 Book Reviews Issue 83 “The fact that I consider myself a film critic first and a feminist second means that I feel an obligation to the wholeness and complexity of film...
Western/Non-Western Approaches: Refocus: The Films of Budd Boetticher by Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer (eds.) Dean Brandum June 2017 Book Reviews Issue 83 In 1969 Jim Kitses’ Horizons West: Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah: Studies in Authorship within the Western was published. The...
Actively Retroactive: On the Couch with Film Noir: Out of the Past: Lacan and Film Noir by Ben Tyrer Shannon Scott June 2017 Book Reviews Issue 83 Ben Tyrer’s Out of the Past: Lacan and Film Noir forms a “Borromean Knot” of Lacanian film theory, Freudian psychoanalysis, and film noir,...
Cinema against Cinema: Daech, le cinéma et la mort by Jean-Louis Comolli Daniel Fairfax June 2017 Book Reviews Issue 83 Outside of France, Jean-Louis Comolli is principally known in the film studies world for his stint as the editor of Cahiers du cinéma in the years...
The Critic as Creator: Better Living through Criticism, by A.O. Scott Joshua Sperling June 2017 Book Reviews Issue 83 A.O. Scott is one of the few film critics working today whose fuller personality comes through in their prose. From his weekly reviews for the New...
Other Criteria: Thinking in the Dark: Cinema, Theory, Practice, by Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer (eds.) Swagato Chakravorty March 2017 Book Reviews Issue 82 Edited by Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer, Thinking in the Dark: Cinema, Theory, Practice comprises a series of reflections by an impressive...
Concrete Passages: Cinema’s Baroque Flesh: Film, Phenomenology and the Art of Entanglement, by Saige Walton John Edmond March 2017 Book Reviews Issue 82 The merits of Saige Walton’s Cinema’s Baroque Flesh: Film, Phenomenology and the Art of Entanglement lie in the parallels between baroque...
Revisiting Film Ontology: Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory, by Victor Fan Hiu M. Chan March 2017 Book Reviews Issue 82 Victor Fan’s Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory encourages a concept that has been long forgotten in studies of aesthetics...
Of Myth and Madness: Mad Dog Morgan (Australian Screen Classics), by Jake Wilson Stephen Morgan December 2016 Book Reviews Issue 81 If Mad Dog Morgan (Philippe Mora, 1976) is one of the grubbiest films of the first phase of Australia’s post-1970 feature film revival, it also...
Ethical Encounters: Teaching Transnational Cinema: Politics and Pedagogy, by Katarzyna Marciniak and Bruce Bennett (eds.) Shabnam Piryaei December 2016 Book Reviews Issue 81 In the context of incessant war and war-rhetoric, state-sanctioned torture, refugee crises, fear of terrorism, and increasing animosity toward...
Two or Three Things I Know About Her: Violent Women in Contemporary Cinema, by Janice Loreck Alison Taylor December 2016 Book Reviews Issue 81 There’s a moment in Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992) when Dr. Beth Garner tries to warn her on-again off-again lover, Detective Nick Curran,...
Entering the Chiastic Multimedia: Encounters with Godard: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics, by James S. Williams Jonathan Wright December 2016 Book Reviews Issue 81 Much of Jean-Luc Godard’s most innovative intriguing work occurred after his period of militant Marxism in the late 1960s. Although far fewer of...
