OFCS members don’t just write film reviews. Here are several articles you might find interesting.
Best of Lists
Son of Saul tops Greek Film Critics’ best-of-year list
Joseph Proimakis @ Cineuropa.org
- Excerpt: In what was dubbed Year of the Woman, we’ve come down to an Oscar race revolving around a single white male with a bear on his back. How did that happen?
Interviews
Joseph Fiennes on “Risen”
Niobe Thompson and Darren Fung on ‘The Great Human Odyssey’
- Excerpt: The director and composer talk about taking their documentary from the small screen to epic live performance.
Rafi Pitts can’t stand the ignorance surround Green Card Soldiers
Joseph Proimakis @ Popaganda.gr [Greek]
- Excerpt: A Berlinale regular, the Iranian born director discusses this year’s Competition entry Soy Nero, regarding Green Card Soldiers and the American Dream Act
Soy Nero – Rafi Pitts interview
Joseph Proimakis @ Cineuropa.org
- Excerpt: Iranian director Rafi Pitts, who has screened his latest film, Soy Nero [+], at the Berlinale, sat down to discuss his return to the German gathering and some of the issues explored in his movie.
Tomasz Wasilweski – United States of Love interview
Joseph Proimakis @ Cineuropa.org
- Excerpt: First-time Berlinale competitor Tomasz Wasilewski came to Berlin a newbie and left an award winner with United States of Love [+], his story of three women suffering emotional and nervous breakdowns in the aftermath of the Polish communist era, which earned him the Best Script Award.
Festivals: General Coverage
Living the High Life – GFF diary days 1&2: Hail Caesar!, Ben Wheatley and Con Air as you’ve never seen it before
Thrills and Spills – GFF diary days 3&4: Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Vic Armstrong, Aidan Moffat and Chuckles the Xenomorph
Festivals: Individual Reviews
Blood of My Blood
Kenji Fujishima @ The House Next Door
Bouli Lanner’s The First The Last is a marvel of genre-bending
Joseph Proimakis @ Popaganda.gr [Greek]
Forbidden Films
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Forbidden Films deals specifically with the 50 or so Nazi-era motion pictures that are still banned from unrestricted public viewing. Director Felix Moeller isn’t so much interested in the films themselves as in the debate surrounding whether it would be wise to loose them upon the general public.
Fuocoammare pics up Golden Bear
Joseph Proimakis @ Popaganda.gr [Greek]
- Excerpt: Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary on the Italian island of Lampedusa picks up top honours at a heavily political set of prizes
GFF 2016: Experimenter Review
Ross Miller @ Thoughts On Film
- Excerpt: An admirable experiment but ultimately a failed one.
GFF 2016: Martyrs Review
Ross Miller @ Thoughts On Film
- Excerpt: This is the very definition of a pointless remake.
GFF 2016: The Club Review
Ross Miller @ Thoughts On Film
- Excerpt: The sobering effect of this troubling, and troubled, film is in the pondering.
Greek actress Dafni Patakia shines as Berlinale Shooting Star
Joseph Proimakis @ Popaganda.gr [Greek]
Greek actress Dafni Patakia shines on Shooting Stars ceremony
Joseph Proimakis @ Popaganda.gr [Greek]
Greek talents shine in Berlinale
Joseph Proimakis @ Popaganda.gr [Greek]
- Excerpt: Greek films may have been absent, but the future of Greek cinema was present at the Berlinale market
Home Care
Marilyn Ferdinand @ Ferdy on Films
- Excerpt: Home Care, the debut feature of director Slávek Horák, examines a self-sacrificing home care nurse who, compelled by personal calamity, looks for more out of life. Despite its conventional story, director Horák and his crack cast infuse this familiar story with humor and heart.
Jude Law and Colin Firth share 1920s bromance in Genius
Joseph Proimakis @ Popaganda.gr [Greek]
Michael Moore thanks the Germans at Euro-premiere of Where to Invade Next
Joseph Proimakis @ Popaganda.gr [Greek]
Thomas Vinterberg’s The Commune awakens sleepy fest
Joseph Proimakis @ Popaganda.gr [Greek]
- Excerpt: Thomas Vinterberg’s story of a 70’s era Danish commune breathes life into flop-ridden audience
Tributes
Filming Outside the Box: The Hybrid Films of Abbas Kiarostami
- Excerpt: On Close-Up, Taste of Cherry, Ten, and the director’s form-pushing ingenuity.
Television
Becoming Mike Nichols
Sarah D Bunting @ Previously.TV
Can Vinyl be rock n roll’s Game of Thrones
Joseph Proimakis @ Popaganda.gr [Greek]
Supergirl: Fight or Flight
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: For some reason, Superman’s shadow keeps falling on Supergirl, and in Fight or Flight, the third episode from the debut season, it quite literally falls on her.
Supergirl: Human For A Day
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: Human For a Day might be the best Supergirl episode yet, especially after the disappointing Red Faced.
Supergirl: Livewire
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: As for Livewire itself, we’re still stuck in the ‘freak-of-the-week’ mode, but with some new character development and a mystery that will make things more interesting.
Supergirl: Red Faced
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: If it weren’t for Melissa Benoist’s still magnificent turn as The Girl of Steel, I would have ranked Red Faced lower than I already did. SHE made the episode. SHE was worth watching. Everything else was kind of blah.
Supergirl: Stronger Together
Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: However, thanks to great work by Melissa Benoist in particular and some wonderful moments of humor in the middle of the action, Stronger Together is another winner for this debut season.
Essays
Destroy All Monsters: What I’ve Learned From Completely Failing At #52FilmsByWomen
Explaining The Witch Ending
- Excerpt: Quite honestly, it is the only dramatically satisfying and queasily tragic outcome that could occur in this perverse nightmare…
Kimberly Renee: What It’s Really Like to Be a WoC Film Critic (Blog Series)
Candice Frederick @ Reel Talk Online
- Excerpt: While I wish I could see Gog in 3D, I don’t feel like I’m missing a lot in the flat version.
On #OscarsSoWhite, Slavery Context, and THE BIRTH OF A NATION
Candice Frederick @ Reel Talk Online
The Real History of Hail Caesar! and Eddie Mannix
- Excerpt: But even with all the glitz and fizz of Hollywood’s Golden Age, there is a catch this time around to their deliberate dryness: Brolin’s Eddie Mannix did exist in our reality, he did often put the squeeze on movie stars, and he was nobody’s numbskull.
We Asked Industry Insiders: How Can Hollywood Really Fix Its Inclusion Problem?
- Excerpt: From tweets to blog posts to newspaper articles, the conversation almost always ends with acknowledgement of the problem, and with precious few suggestions for how to actually fix it. So with that goal in mind, I reached out to several people in the industry – directors, writers, producers – to tell their stories and to talk, on and off the record, about how to do that.
Reviews of Short Films
Rampa
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Portuguese Short Film Review
Other Articles
Hollywood Movies: Their Changing Nature
Betty Jo Tucker @ Movie Addict Headquarters
- Excerpt: Acclaimed author/screenwriter/playwright Bill Mesce discusses his book “Reel Change: The Changing Nature of Hollywood, Hollywood Movies and the People Who Go To See Them.”
The Morning After: Feb. 22, 2016
- Excerpt: Short reviews of “Room” and “Sicario”
New tech gives stop-motion animation its Oscar moment
Sarah Gopaul @ Digital Journal
- Excerpt: Stop-motion animation moved into the fast(er) lane when LAIKA studio decided to employ 3D technologies to create its characters’ thousands of faces.
