OFCS members don’t just write film reviews. Here are several articles you might find interesting.
Interviews
Back in the Habit
- Excerpt: An interview with Ida director Pawel Pawlikowski
Dave McKean
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: Artist Dave McKean illuminates the long process of creating his new film Luna, and wonders whether fantasy has turned into too much of a commodity to be meaningful anymore.
Denzel Washington and Antoine Fuqua
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: The star and director of The Equalizer discuss the film’s biggest explosion and who should playing Washington’s character if they ever reboot St. Elsewhere.
Filmmaker Jen McGowan
Mike McGranaghan @ Film Racket
Idris Elba
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: Idris Elba explains how wanting his co-star Taraji Henson to shut up improved his performance in No Good Deed.
In Order of Disappearance Interview
- Excerpt: Stefan Pape interviews Stellan Skarsgard for In Order of Disappearance.
Joe and Anthony Russo
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: The Russo Brothers offer new updates on Captain America 3.
Taraji Henson
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: Taraji Henson reveals how she took her revenge on Idris Elba after her hit her in the face with a gun while making No Good Deed.
Festivals: General Coverage
The 2014 BFI London Film Festival
Philip Concannon @ Phil on Film
Athens International Film Festival ready for its 20th birthday
Joseph Proimakis @ Cineuropa.org
- Excerpt: A record number of 241 films will populate the event’s various programmes, including 11 titles vying for the Golden Athena Award
Drama Short Film Festival Celebrates Its 20th International Edition
Joseph Proimakis @ Cineuropa.org
- Excerpt: Celebrating its 20th year as an international event, Drama’s Short Film Festival (15-20 September) will populate its 37th edition’s programme with over 200 titles from around the globe, 38 of which will showcase what has been ceremoniously dubbed as the most vivid side of Greek film production.
Thessaloniki to celebrate 100 years of Greek cinema
Joseph Proimakis @ Cineuropa.org
- Excerpt: Marking its 55th anniversary, Greece’s major film gathering calls on viewers to populate the celebratory list for the country’s cinematic centennial
Festivals: Individual Reviews
Big Game
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: We want to believe in all the stupid things that happen in Big Game, and because Helander portrays them in just the right way… we really do.
Chicagoland event coverage: Drive-In Massacre 2014
Daniel Lackey @ The Nightmare Gallery
The Cobbler
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: It’s easy to see why Adam Sandler would want to work with a thoughtful, character-driven filmmaker like Thomas McCarthy. It’s a just a little baffling that McCarthy would suck half the marketability out of Sandler’s popular schtick and not fill in the gaps with something thoughtful or character-driven.
Confession
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: Lee Do-yun knows how this genre works and wrings every emotional beat dry, washing his film in effective melodrama so you can really appreciate all that shiny craftsmanship. But if you’ve seen it before, you’ll only be seeing it again.
The Drop
Jordan M. Smith @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: Bathed in the shadows of the Brooklyn underground by cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis, The Drop is an elegantly shot and competently acted slow burn suspenser overworked by just a tinge of canine inflected melodramatic flair.
The Duke of Burgundy
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: An unconventional romance about very conventional romantic hangups that affect every long-term relationship, whether kinkiness is involved or not. It’s about the issues that arise when we demand that our lovers read our minds, even though we are too often afraid to speak them.
The Equalizer
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: Lightning doesn’t strike twice with The Equalizer, but there was at least a noble attempt to make this straightforward vigilante thriller a little more interesting than it needed to be.
Festival Coverage – Toronto 2014: First Dispatch
Kenji Fujishima @ In Review Online
The Humbling
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: This is Pacino the actor, once again playing an actor not unlike Pacino, in a film that plays like an apology for the last decade of inferior films, and as an uneasy attempt to prove that he’s a good sport about it all.
The Judge
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: David Dobkin’s hopelessly maudlin and glacially paced drama The Judge is one part John Grisham thriller and one part James L. Brooks melodrama, two great tastes that taste absolutely abysmal together.
The Last Five Years
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: Maybe The Last Five Years is a little more intoxicating than it is genuinely great. But that’s still pretty damned good.
The Look of Silence
Jordan M. Smith @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: The Look of Silence takes an even more sobering stance on the subject, this time reflecting on Indonesia’s unique political circumstance from the perspective of those whose friends and family were killed by the murderers who are still in power and continue to live among the community they are forced to share. Less formally daring than its predecessor, yet even more emotionally involving, Oppenheimer’s latest film is, in a word, shattering.
Luna
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: Luna is half-full of wonders, half-full of naïveté, and all full of promise.
Mr. Turner
William Bibbiani @ CraveOnline
- Excerpt: Mr. Turner illustrates the worlds he made for himself, and allows them to speak for themselves, or at least through the confused admiration of the people who held him dear, and not so much the critics… ahem. But anyway.
La Sapienza
- Excerpt: Green’s mannered direction doesn’t work for every situation it’s homogenously applied to…, but at its most effective it inspires an enhanced sensitivity to the import of every gesture, visual or verbal. In such moments, La Sapienza offers an ideal case study for the notion that no story is fundamentally doomed, and that even a stock middle-age rediscovery narrative such as this can be seen anew.
Tales of the Grim Sleeper
Jordan M. Smith @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: Harkening back to his fascination with the backwoods serial killer of his Aileen films while expanding upon the police corruption found within the Biggie & Tupac murder cases, Tales of the Grim Sleeper sees director Nick Broomfield enter into the poverty stricken war zone that is South Central, conducting his own thorough investigation of the politically repressed Grim Sleeper serial murders, all the while garnering the trust and respect of those closest to the killings, almost all of whom were never spoken to by detectives supposedly on the case.
Waking the Green Tiger
Donald Levit @ ReelTalk Movie reviews
The Wanted 18
Jordan M. Smith @ IONCINEMA.com
- Excerpt: While The Wanted 18 certainly cares for its subjects and admires their brave attempt at self-sustenance through non-violence and community action, it tries to paint their very real struggle as a comedic caper with dire results.
Tributes
Roy Andersson and the nihilism in slapstick
Joseph Proimakis @ Popaganda.gr [Greek]
- Excerpt: Can TV commercials mix with social awareness comentary? Welcome to the world of Golden Lion winner Roy Andersson
Awards Coverage
E Agora? Lembra-me candidato português aos Oscars
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: What Now? Remind Me, a film by Joaquim Pinto is the Portuguese candidate to Foreign Language Film.
The Movie Press’ Oscar Obsession Is Ruining Fall Film Festivals for Everyone
- Excerpt: If you’ll pardon the graphic imagery, the Oscar Industry has become a giant circle-jerk, and perhaps the film press assembling at fall festivals could put their junk away and just watch some movies.
Television
‘The Simpsons,’ ‘The Wire,’ and Why You Should Care About Cropped TV Shows
- Excerpt: More troublesome is this idea that television craftsmanship isn’t worth preserving if the media in question isn’t some kind of esteemed masterpiece, a bit of nasty cultural elitism that is a little shocking here in the Silver Age of Television, and which makes Wade sound about as clueless and obnoxious as those outmoded “I don’t even own a television” assholes. Because The Simpsons IS the Lawrence of Arabia of television comedy — and its dismissal, as “just” a cartoon or “just” a sitcom or whatever slight you’d care to plug in is exactly the kind of snobbery that led us to lose 75 percent of all silent films.
Essays
Would Some RomComs Work Better as Short Films?
Reviews of Short Films
Martyn
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Italian Short Film Review
Morales
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Spanish Short Film Review
Other Articles
“I Took Part”: Werner Herzog on Truth, Fiction, and ‘Parks & Recreation’
- Excerpt: We are in awe of his accomplishments yet amused, and sometimes alarmed, by his transgressions. He has come to fill one of the oldest types in all of the movies: that of the brilliant madman.
A Few Good Men
Sarah D Bunting @ Tomato Nation
Film Critics Preview Fall Film Schedule
Betty Jo Tucker @ Movie Addict Headquarters
- Excerpt: A spirited podcast discussion with film critics Nell Minow, A.J. Hakari and Mack Bates.
The Morning After: Sep. 8, 2014
- Excerpt: Short review of You Can Count on Me
Os Maias – Cenas da Vida Romântica
Paulo Peralta @ CinEuphoria [Portuguese]
- Excerpt: Portuguese Feature that was in the shorlist for the Foreign Language Film Selection at the Oscars.
Tightwad Terror Tuesday for 9-9-14 – The Best Free Horror Movies on the Web
James Jay Edwards @ iHorror.com
Why Is Labor Day Such a Terrible Weekend for Movies?
- Excerpt: Why, year after year, does the summer go out with a whimper instead of a bang? And with so much hand-wringing over the steep dip in revenues this season, shouldn’t the studios be looking to expand their weirdly collapsed summer?
