Film Review: Inception

The term “auteur” has historically been thrown around a lot a bit haphazardly, preemptively. Auteur theory was popularized by the likes of Francois Truffaut (a film critic who made films that examined the constructedness of filmmaking) in his Cahiers du Cinema, with cinematic juggernauts like Hitchcock and Welles regarded worshipfully as the de facto examples. [...]

Film Review: Jerichow

Jerichow is a modernized, Teutonic film noir.
Sort of.
Let’s try this again.
Jerichow is an intellectualized exploration of greed and desperation.
Well, yes, it’s definitely that, too.
One more time.
Jerichow is full of surprises.
That pretty much nails it.
While it would be pretty easy, and also accurate enough, to sum up Jerichow as a loose interpretation of James M. Cain’s [...]

Film Review: Tulpan

I know that it is written somewhere in the top-secret handbook of film critics that you must give rave reviews to all foreign films no matter what, especially when that foreign film deals with a specific culture or practice that is scarcely touched upon (such as: goat herders inhabiting the steppes of Kazakhstan), filling some [...]

Film Review: “Séraphine” A Self Taught Primitive Painter

Séraphine is the story of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. Séraphine Louis was a housecleaner in a tiny provincial town in France called Senlis. She was in her forties already when she first took up the paint brush, following the instruction of her “guardian angel.” Her work was a joke amongst the other townspeople, [...]

Second-Annual DWIFF Highlights

I admit that this year’s Detroit Windsor International Film Festival seemed a little less grand in scope, with screenings and opening/closing ceremonies being held almost solely on the Wayne State University campus (compared to last year when the opening ceremony was in the center of the RenCen, the opening night film premiere was at the [...]

DWIFF Discovery: The Rain World Premiere

Rain Trailer 2 (SD) from Doug Schulze on Vimeo.
Rain, rain, go away…
No, really, please, do.
This eerie children’s chant is the opening theme for the film The Rain, directed by Michigan filmmaker Douglas Schulze, which had its world premiere last week at the second-annual Detroit Windsor International Film Festival.
And all I have to say about it [...]

DWIFF Discovery: Breaking Upwards

The Detroit Windsor International Film Festival is here, and already there have been some truly top-notch discoveries.  First, Breaking Upwards:

Breaking Upwards Movie Trailer from Breaking Upwards on Vimeo.
We’ve all been through it before—the long-term relationship gone stale, the inability to let go, the struggle of the fear of being alone versus the continued misery of [...]

Film Review: Big Man Japan

Imagine a Japan in which Godzilla and Gomera still exist…the catch is, people no longer care. Imagine also that to fight these oversized beasts, select men are chosen by the Monster Defense Bureau to be electrocuted into a larger-than-life size (don’t ask for the scientifics behind that). Imagine still that these fights are filmed and [...]

O’Horten: A Quiet Comedy At The DFT

One word that I have seen repeatedly used to describe Bent Hamer’s dramedy on the Golden Years is “quiet.” Yes, this is a quiet film—long, lingering scenes dwelling on protagonist Odd Horten’s deeply-lined expressive face; meandering moments when the camera wanders away from Odd’s adventures and just kind of moseys along streetscapes with a tinkling, [...]

It Came From Detroit and Stayed There

It Came From Detroit is perhaps one of the most culturally relevant documentaries of a particular time and place in music ever made. A documentary film five years in production (and almost mythic in stature—spoken of widely as the pinnacle tome on the Detroit “garage” scene, a claim made fervently by even those who have never seen it), It Came From Detroit chronicles some 20 years of Detroit’s thriving independent rock-and-roll subculture—Detroit “garage,” as it came to be known all over the world.