Film
America’s Unraveling on Screen
Filmmakers are increasingly registering, and, in turn, reflecting back at us from the silver screen, fears of a future defined by vigilantism, insurgencies and state violence. Films like “Civil War,” “The Order,” “Eddington” and “One Battle After Another” warn of what might follow the collapse of conventional politics.
The Return of Nuclear Cinema
Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film, “A House of Dynamite,” signals a revived concern with the risky realities of nuclear weapons — while the treaties meant to contain them are allowed to lapse and the memories of the devastation they can cause recede.
Superman Was Always a Social Justice Warrior
Superman’s real power has perhaps never been X-ray vision or being faster than a speeding bullet. It may rather have been the character's overall consistent penchant for social justice. Even when it wasn’t — or isn’t — popular.
Finding Space To Dissent From Israel’s Wartime Narrative
In “Shivtown,” documentary filmmaker Hillel Ben-Zeev Perlov tells the story of three unhappy years he spent as a photographer at a remote Israeli army base, asking penetrating questions about universal concerns like generational trauma and why we perpetuate cycles of hatred and wars.
How South Korea’s Directors Took Their Discontent Global
Contemporary South Korean film and television present the capitalist system that emerged following the peninsula’s war over 70 years ago as fundamentally broken, generating class divisions that cannot be penetrated through perseverance or hard work. Their message is uniform: Either we destroy it, or it destroys us.
Unearthing a Dark Chapter in Chile’s History
Felipe Galvez Haberle’s “The Settlers” (“Los Colonos”) is anything but a typical Western. Utterly devoid of heroism or romance, it explores a dark chapter in Chile’s history, deconstructing not only the morality of the gunslingers but also the historical setting in which they operated.
A Film Critic Reflects on the Artistic Journeys and Vision of the Late French Director Jean-Luc Godard
Godard and his critical colleagues comprised the first generation of cinephiles who treated film history as part of cultural history.