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 […]
THE WORST SCIENCE FICTION FILMS OF ALL TIME: PT. 1
Even when a sci-fi or a horror movie is bad, there’s a very intrinsically visual component to it. It’s just inherent to the genre: You’re world building.
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 […]
INTERVIEW: JESSICA PRESSLER
Jessica Pressler is an American journalist who currently works as a contributing editor at New York Magazine. Her article “The Hustlers at Scores”, originally published in 2015, is the source material for the new film Hustlers (2019), written for the screen and directed by Lorene Scafaria. The true-crime narrative concerns a small group of former […]
ALIEN ADORNMENT: FAMED STAR TREK JEWELRY DESIGNER MAGGIE SCHPAK TO BE HONORED AT ARTISAN’S ASYLUM
There will also be an online auction of unique prop jewelry pieces from Sept 19-27 as well as a creative workshop on creating jewelry for an appearance on the screen, date and time TBA.
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 […]
