“Hollywood Whodunnits” at the Brattle Theatre, including a triple feature of Meet Nero Wolfe (dir. Herbert Biberman, 1936), The Kennel Murder Case (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1933), and The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934). Triple feature on 11.23, films at 3:30, 5:15, and 7 pm, respectively. 35mm. Full program 11.22–11.27; see brattlefilm.org for schedule and […]
INTERVIEW: HADEN GUEST
Haden Guest is the director of the Harvard Film Archive, as well as the senior lecturer on art, film, and visual studies at the university. He recently curated and organized “The B-Film: Low-Budget Hollywood Cinema 1935-1959,” a repertory film program that originally served as the centerpiece of the Vinennale 2018 and is currently ongoing […]
REPERTORY FILM REPORT: “HALLOWEEN HORROR MARATHON” AT THE COOLIDGE
“19th Annual Halloween Horror Marathon” Saturday, Oct. 26. 11:59pm. Coolidge Corner Theatre. Seven films projected via 35mm. $25-30. The Coolidge Corner Theatre’s “Halloween Horror Marathon” has operated by the same general methodology since Mark Anastasio, the current director of special programming at the historic theater, booked it for the first time in 2007: Starting […]
FESTIVAL REPORT: BUFF-O-WEEN AT THE SOMERVILLE
An ongoing local film program that we’ve shamefully yet to cover here in the pages of DigBoston is the Boston Underground Film Festival’s “Dispatches from the Underground,” held monthly at the Somerville Theatre to show both short films and features that embody the BUFF programming mantra. Having thus expanded into a regular monthly fixture within […]
FILM REVIEW: “3 FROM HELL”
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 […]
