The Past, Present and Future of Toomelah (Ivan Sen, 2011) Nicholas Bugeja October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film The bulk of Ivan Sen’s cinematic oeuvre – documentary and fiction (not that there is always great disparity between the two) – converges around a set ...
Death, Neglect and Conspiracy in Mystery Road (Ivan Sen, 2013) Nicholas Bugeja October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film A dead Indigenous girl, no more than 16 years of age, is discovered in a drain underneath a highway in the aptly named Massacre Creek area. The drain ...
The Trouble with Sound: Prix de beauté (Augusto Genina, 1930) Shari Kizirian October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Variety’s correspondent in Berlin describes the unfortunate fate of Prix de beauté (Augusto Genina, 1930), a film about a beauty queen saddled with a ...
A Girl in Every Port (Howard Hawks, 1928) Grant Bromley October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film “Man’s favorite sport?” The answer, presumably, in the world of Howard Hawks, is “woman”. At least, that’s what’s on the surface in Hawks’ work. One d...
Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi, 1961) Rahul Hamid October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Ermanno Olmi’s first feature, Il Posto (1961), is often misrepresented as being a continuation of the tradition of neorealism. This highly influential...
His Enchanted Gaze: The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi, 1978) Joseph Sgammato October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Among important Italian directors, Ermanno Olmi occupies a curious middle ground. Critics and fans alike may sense that his works offer more substance...
The Melancholy Dance of the (Un)Masked Soul: I fidanzati (Ermanno Olmi, 1963) Rolland Man October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film By Ermanno Olmi’s own admission, I fidanzati (The Engagement), his third feature, is a pivotal work in his career. His first feature, Il tempo si è fe...
From Saturday to Sunday (Gustav Machatý, 1931), or: Don’t you wonder sometimes ’bout sound and vision? Cerise Howard September 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film The work of Czech director Gustav Machatý (1901–1963) is enjoying a surprise renaissance. The 76th Venice Film Festival had as its pre-opening event a...
A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971) Martyn Bamber July 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Elaine May’s film directing debut, A New Leaf (1971) is a pitch-black comedy centred on Henry Graham (Walter Matthau), an affluent, self-absorbed bach...
Blue Steel (Kathryn Bigelow, 1990) Ben Kooyman July 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Kathryn Bigelow has defied expectations throughout her unorthodox career: the co-director of arthouse biker movie The Loveless (1981) also helmed the ...
Close to You: Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972) Danica van de Velde July 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Elaine May opens her second feature film, The Heartbreak Kid (1972), by compressing the full cycle of courtship into three minutes. From the film’s sm...
The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008) Rahul Hamid July 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film When Kathryn Bigelow won an Oscar for directing The Hurt Locker (2008), she was the first (and to this day, only) woman to receive the award. Not only...
Ishtar (Elaine May, 1987) Brad Weismann July 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film If all of the people who hate Ishtar had seen it, I would be a rich woman. – Elaine May While it’s true that you learn more from mistakes than succe...
Joseph Kilián (Pavel Juráček & Jan Schmidt, 1963) Darragh O’Donoghue July 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Much of the visual lexicon we associate with the term ‘Kafkaesque’ was established by Orson Welles’ adaptation of The Trial (1962) and Pavel Juráček a...
“Open the Door”: Access and Dominance in Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976) Ivana Brehas July 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film The men of Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky (1976) seem trapped in a tenuous, exhausting, night-long tug of war. The film follows two small-time criminals...
Rosita (Ernst Lubitsch, 1923) Shari Kizirian July 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film A 1923 American release about a scrappy street singer who catches the eye of a lascivious king in a fictional Old Seville, Rosita was a turning point ...
Sexy Smart Women in Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932) Gwendolyn Audrey Foster July 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film One of the most sublime of all Ernst Lubitsch’s romantic comedies, Trouble in Paradise (1932) is a delicate and carefully balanced mixture of languoro...
“A Happy Sense of Solitude”: Exterior Space in The Flavour of Green Tea over Rice (Yasujirō Ozu, 1952) Joanna Di Mattia March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film The Flavour of Green Tea over Rice (1952) appears early in the most lauded period of Yasujirō Ozu’s 35-year career. Inevitably overshadowed by the fil...
Les cousins (Claude Chabrol, 1959) Anthony Frajman March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film In many ways, the Nouvelle Vague began with Claude Chabrol. Not only was he instrumental in assisting his Cahiers du Cinéma colleagues’ early producti...
Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955) Rahul Hamid March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film A panting woman hurtles down a highway, wearing only a trenchcoat. A man in a speeding sports car careens toward her: a near collision. Unexpectedly, ...
The Gentle Perfume of Despair: Sans lendemain (Max Ophuls, 1939) David Melville March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Ever and anon the snow fell, penetrating so profoundly into the depths of her enraptured being that she had no room in her for any other sensation tha...
The Trouble with Money (Max Ophuls, 1936) Darragh O’Donoghue March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Max Ophuls has been called a humanist director, but if we define humanism as referring to the centrality of human activity to the universe, then he is...
Tender Restraint: Tokyo Twilight (Yasujirō Ozu, 1957) Danica van de Velde March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film A man’s hat left forgotten on a wall hook in a laneway izakaya; a bottle of whisky lit by lamplight on a desk piled with mountains of books; a plume o...
Too Late the Hero (Robert Aldrich, 1970) Brad Weismann March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Robert Aldrich’s career is a manifest of contradictions. One of the first living directors to be lauded as an auteur, he conscientiously worked his wa...
The Ascent (1977): Larisa Shepitko’s Final Word Shari Kizirian March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film The breathless immediacy of Voskhozhdeniye (The Ascent, Larisa Shepitko, 1977), adapted from a novella by Vasily Bykov about two Belarusian partisans ...
Early Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1956) Martyn Bamber March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Sōshun (Early Spring, 1956) follows Yasujirō Ozu’s classic Tōkyō monogatari (Tokyo Story, 1953) in continuing to develop the director’s characteristic...
Vera Cruz (Robert Aldrich, 1954): A “Superwestern” from the Postwar Hollywood Left Sandra E. Lim March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film At the end of the American Civil War and during the height of the Franco–Mexican War, circa 1866, Joe Erin (Burt Lancaster) and Ben Trane (Gary Cooper...
Women as Prey: Les bonnes femmes (Claude Chabrol, 1960) Gwendolyn Audrey Foster March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Claude Chabrol is often called the French Hitchcock, but, to my mind, Chabrol is the far more provocative director, because of his brutal honesty abou...
“I Do Not Believe”: Night of the Eagle (Sidney Hayers, 1962) Wheeler Winston Dixon March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Sidney Hayers’ Night of the Eagle (1962) was based on the 1943 Fritz Leiber novel Conjure Wife, which had been filmed once before by Universal as Weir...
Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957) Eloise Ross March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film “Some of my best friends are ghosts,” says Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews). He is being sarcastic (and Dana Andrews was one of the best serious men at ...
The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973) Daniel Lammin March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film It’s in no way an exaggeration to say that there is no other film like Robin Hardy’s 1973 masterpiece The Wicker Man. Buried by its studio on initial ...
The Power of Imagination: The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961) Wheeler Winston Dixon March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961) is one of the screen’s supreme ghost stories, and also one of the last great films shot in black-and-white CinemaSc...
See, Hear, and Speak of Evil: Three Monkeys (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2008) Joseph Sgammato February 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys, 2008) was the fifth of the eight features that have so far been directed by Cannes favourite Nuri Bilge Ceylan, a leading Tu...
Fractured Images and Tainted Dreams: Sergio Leone’s Once upon a Time in America Danica van de Velde February 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Towards the end of Sergio Leone’s opening sequence in Once upon a Time in America (1984), the film’s protagonist, David “Noodles” Aaronson (Robert De ...
Ida Lupino’s Hard Noir: Private Hell 36 (Don Siegel, 1954) Eloise Ross October 2018 CTEQ Annotations on Film In this grim, sexy film noir about corrupt male police officers, its lasting effect can be attributed to its lead woman, Ida Lupino. Yet the first wom...
Hail (Amiel Courtin-Wilson, 2011) Felicity Ford October 2018 CTEQ Annotations on Film Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s film Hail (2011) opens with an epic celestial battle in the sky: an immortal army of hunters descending from the heavens on hor...