What constitutes a feminist film? While a number of movies have been described as having underlying feminist messages, there is no set definition, no easy way to identify whether or not a movie lives up to associated philosophical ideals (the staid statistical analysis of the Bechdel test notwithstanding). However, some movies take an indirect route […]
Year: 2016
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The 20 Best Tarkovskian Films Not By Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky was a poet of cinema who was famous for his techniques, his use of long takes, slow dollies, atmospheric use of elements, and legendary theories about cinema as sacrifice and cinema as sculpting in time. He was also one of the directors who most successfully integrated cinema and philosophy. His style, made of […]
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The 10 Best Horror Movies Set in a Single Location
The incredible success of Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe, even in a year so good for horror movies, proves once again that claustrophobic environment and minimalist cast/locations are prime ingredients for the genre. Surely, it puts more pressure on the director to create atmosphere and on the writer to keep things tense and interesting, but the […]
Sins of the Flesh – VIFF 2016 Review
“You came and brought ruin with you,” says Fatma (Nahed El Sebai) through tears of anger and heartbreak, to her one-time lover, Aly (Ahmed Abdala Mahomud), recently escaped from prison in the new intense new Egyptian drama, Sins of the Flesh. Written and directed by Khaled El Hagar (Room to Rent, El Shooq), himself a […]
Ghostland – VIFF 2016 Review
“The plane wakes up,” says one of the Ju/’hoansi people as she takes her first trip ever on an airplane, destined for “overseas” aka Germany in Simon Stadler’s endearing and open-handed documentary, Ghostland. With an observant but never overly intrusive eye Stadler presents the Ju/’huansi as engaging and endearing subjects. A tribal people who’ve lost […]
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The 12 Most Erotic Non-Sex Scenes in Movie History
From the birth of cinema, filmmakers have always tried to delve deep into our subconscious, overcoming restraints and taboos, in a constant search of discovering the most repressed aspects of the human psyche. Among these aspect, human erotisism thematically dominated the seventh art. Major directors from every corner of the world pushed the limits of […]