Returning to the material which produced The Devil’s Rejects (2005), Rob Zombie resurrects his most cherished characters in 3 From Hell (2019)—and in reanimating them, undoes nearly everything the prior film accomplished. Opening with a strong expository prologue filmed in the manner of late ’80s tabloid-news TV, 3 From Hell instructs us that the villains killed off […]
FILM REVIEW: “THE HOTTEST AUGUST”
Certain nonfiction and experimental cinema forebears were quite present during the 2019 iteration of the Camden International Film Festival, which exhibited numerous films that were far more than mere tributes to their predecessors but proudly wore citations on their surfaces anyway. The program “Shorts X: The Hermit”, for instance, included two separate works, Ellie Ga’s […]
FESTIVAL REPORT: “CABALLERANGO” AT CIFF AND BLIFF
Caballerango (2018) played as part of this year’s Camden International Film Festival, which took place from September 12-15, 2019. It will play as part of the Boston Latino International Film Festival tonight, September 27, at the Emerson Paramount Center. At the 2018 iteration of the Camden International Film Festival I saw one film of […]
FILM REVIEW: “AMERICAN FACTORY”
One of the many people interviewed in Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s film The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant (2009) is Popeye, a toolmaker, who after one of his last days of work at the Moraine Assembly factory in Dayton, Ohio, is asked how he feels about the whole damned situation. “To be […]
FESTIVAL REPORT: INTRO FROM CIFF; NOTES ON TWO SHORT FILMS
For the next week DigBoston.com will be publishing reports from the 2019 iteration of the Camden International Film Festival (9.12-9.15), which I’m attending for the third consecutive year, meaning I’ll hopefully finally start to get the hang of its wonderfully complex rhythm. It’s taken so long because the program, which exhibits contemporary nonfiction cinema, typically […]
REPERTORY FILM REPORT: ON “THE B-FILM” AT THE HFA
In a review of the standout William Castle film When Strangers Marry (1944) first published on December 4, 1944, the legendary critic Manny Farber quite favorably compared that particular B-movie with some other films that back then were considered A-features, even noting that the cliches in Castle’s film seemed “fresher and less annoying” than those […]
INTERVIEW: GAVIN HOOD AND MARTIN BRIGHT
Official Secrets (2019), co-written and directed by Gavin Hood, is adapted from the nonfiction book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion (2008), written by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell. The film depicts actions taken in early 2003 by Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), a […]
INTERVIEW: CIFF PROGRAMMING TEAM
The programming for the Camden International Film Festival, which exclusively hosts nonfiction movies, is guided by three individuals: senior programmer Samara Chadwick, program director Sean Flynn, and executive director/artistic director/founder Ben Fowlie. While in the process of drafting a story about the festival, I sent them some questions, and then some more, and so on, […]
FILM REVIEW: “OLD BOYFRIENDS” AT THE HFA
Coming as something of an unofficial follow-up to the revival of Joan Micklin Silver’s Between the Lines (1977) at the Brattle Theatre earlier this year, the Harvard Film Archive is now hosting a new 35mm print of Joan Tewkesbury’s Old Boyfriends (1979), yet another early-career independent film by a Woman of the New Hollywood—and please […]
EXHIBITION REVIEW: “ERICKA BECKMAN: DOUBLE REVERSE” AT MIT
When artist Ericka Beckman premiered the first of her two partially animated tech-oriented 16mm musicals about gaming and labor, You the Better (1983), audiences were unwilling and perhaps even unable to pick up on all that it was putting down. The first, most obvious, and indeed most oft-discussed example of this came on the night […]
