Monty @ 100: The Italian misadventure of "Terminal Station"

by Cláudio Alves

Some movies are more fascinating than they are engaging, working better as a discussion topic than as cinema. Such pictures tend to find their home in writings about film history or critical academia, living on as curious artifacts that thrive on the page while failing on screen. Montgomery Clift's seventh feature, the only time he ever worked with celebrated Italian auteur Vittorio De Sica, is one of such films. Perhaps more accurately, it's two of them…

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Doc Corner: Jamal Khashoggi and the 'Kingdom of Silence'

By Glenn Dunks

It has been a while since I was quite so turned off by a documentary as quickly as I was by Kingdom of Silence. Well-intentioned in its exploration of the special relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and how journalist Jamal Khashoggi came to be executed, but built in a fashion that mimics some sort of Tony Scott crime thriller from the 1990s. Using every trick in the book when the story at its core is so interesting only seeks to diminish its impact.

Director Rick Rowley, an Oscar-nominee for Dirty Wars, isn’t just content with verite filmmaking to create a sense of urgency. Rather his film is edited through a woodchipper, it has an over-abundance of unnecessary focus pulling and slow-motion, plus over-the-top zooms and anonymous overhead camerawork of cities and crowds implying menace everywhere you look. All played against an incessant droning soundtrack full of technological bleeps right out of The Matrix. And that’s just its first two minutes and 51 seconds.

The cumulative effect of it all is exhaustion.

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NYFF: Dea Kulumbegashvili's "Beginning"

by Jason Adams

If you throw a ball, or even better a stick of dynamite, straight up into the air there is a moment of pause, of tranquility, at its peak, before it comes tumbling down. The apogee, as its known, is a fascinating word to me, close as it is to apology -- in my mind I always picture the shrug of the cartoon Coyote as he begins his plummet. Apogee, but whoops here I come. Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili's Beginning, as stunning a debut film as any I've seen, lingers in the feeling of that pause -- the world feels suspended, we're light of breath and danger is nigh, but man the view is something.

The film begins and we meet Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili, staggeringly good) and her husband David (Rati Oneli) as they greet parishioners inside their sparse, fresh-smelling new Jehovah's Witness church, and immediately we notice two things. First that the film was filmed in the squarish frame ratio that's become shorthand for art-minded movie-makers looking to quick express claustrophobia -- think First Reformed or The Lighthouse; right away we know that these are people who are stifled by their surroundings...

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The Furniture: Suddenly, Last Summer and the Dawn of Creation

As a special side dish to our ongoing Montgomery Clift Centennial celebration, The Furniture (our series on Production Design) is looking at one of his most fascinating pictures...

by Daniel Walber

Saint Sebastian had to be martyred twice. Violet Venable (Katherine Hepburn) tells his story with a certain vicious pride, lending her own Sebastian a supernatural authority. The saint was shot full of arrows but survived, miracuously, only to be beaten to death with cudgels. The first death has been depicted by countless artists, a hauntingly beautiful and frequently homoerotic image. The second, meanwhile, is unspeakably violent and ugly. It’s almost forgotten, a brutal footnote to a transcendent aesthetic.

Mrs. Venable’s Sebastian, however, gets it in reverse. As is revealed at the end of Suddenly, Last Summer, he was torn limb from limb under the white hot sun of Cabeza de Lobo. And for what crime? In accordance with the aging Hays Code, it appears to be his homosexuality. But beneath this ultra-thin surface lingers something much darker...

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New Oscar Predictions: Supporting Actress

by Nathaniel R

With most of this year's buzziest titles featuring large casts filled with men, and with the general shortage of movies, Supporting Actress is looking much less competitive than usual. At least so far. This is why we're feeling so confident that the one to watch is 12 year old Helena Zengel of the western drama News of the World. It's a large role -- she plays the kidnapped girl that Tom Hanks is out to rescue -- and just last year with Germany's Oscar submission System Crasher, she made international waves receiving a nomination for Best Actress at the European Film Awards. Of course the film might not open. Nothing is certain this season...

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