Advertisement

Talking Movies: Shot in a single 138-minute take, can Victoria live up to its bold premise?

Victoria

Victoria opens Oct. 23 at FilmScene. I chafe at the word “gimmick.” It’s often used in lieu of something more meaningful to describe the experimental, the exciting, or the formally different. By calling something a “gimmick,” an audience doesn’t have […]

Read More…

Talking Movies: Reel talk on film festivals

Walnut Grove

I’ve begun to have mixed emotions about film festivals. I used to love them without reservation. I still love them, but with a few reservations. Take the Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival, known as IC Docs, which is exclusively focused on short documentaries, at the Adler Journalism Building (Room 105) on April 10 and 11… […]

Read More…

Talking Movies: David Robert Mitchell’s ‘It Follows’

Writer/Director David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows hits many of the notes that are by now (beyond) familiar to horror aficionados — it is, in part, a good summary of the horror movie tropes of the last 25 years or so. The film includes a relentless stalker, the thematization of teenage sexuality, a handful of fake-out jump scares, unseen-but-material malevolent beings, scary children, heroes who make terrible decisions and a moment of shocking gore. But this rather typical assemblage of tropes and characters belies the film’s originality, which consists more in the effective and often unique way these elements are deployed. […]

Read More…