The Culture High

Jan 29, 2018 — “It is an altogether extraordinary life, the stuff of epic,” writes Simon Callow, having just taken us from milestone to milestone in the first fifteen paragraphs of an outstanding piece for the New York Review of Books. “And now, it...

Jan 15, 2018 — Big announcement today from the Berlin International Film Festival, whose sixty-eighth edition runs from February 15 through 25. Following the first round of titles slated for the Competition and Berlinale Special revealed last month, the Berlinale’s now added another thirteen....

Dec 18, 2017 — The new Winter 2017 issue of Cineaste is out and the highlight of what’s online would have to be the interviews, four complete “Web Exclusives.” Dennis West and Joan M. West talk with documentarian Pamela Yates about completing her Guatemalan...

Nov 14, 2017 — Donna Deitch combined tropes of lesbian pulp romance with the sheen of mainstream filmmaking in her beloved debut feature.

Sep 28, 2017 — “If you’ve never seen The Last Detail, Hal Ashby’s 1973 comedy-drama about three Navy sailors on a debauched and ultimately tragic road trip, there are several reasons to rectify that,” begins Dana Stevens at Slate. “There’s a devilishly charismatic performance...

Aug 24, 2017 — Cineaste has posted selections from its fiftieth anniversary issue, along with a round of web exclusives. Louis Menashe, professor emeritus at Polytechnic Institute of New York University and author of Moscow Believes in Tears: Russians and Their Movies, tells the...

Aug 23, 2017 — We’re opening today’s entry with the “goings on” items because today’s must-read comes from Bilge Ebiri in the Village Voice. He assures us that he’s “not exaggerating when I say that I’ve been waiting most of my life to see...

Aug 18, 2017 — “The last time I saw Poison [1991] it shocked me,” Todd Haynes tells Rory O’Connor at the Film Stage, “and it demonstrated to me a different side of myself, of my history, of our history as a culture, as a...

Aug 7, 2017 — The Venice International Film Festival, whose seventy-fourth edition runs from August 30 through September 9, has not only revamped its site, it’s also added three films to its lineup. John Woo’s Manhunt will premiere Out of Competition. “A contemporary remake...

Jul 23, 2017 — “Exploding across the stressed out summer of 2017 like a powder keg thrown into a room that’s already on fire, Kathryn Bigelow’s hectic but harrowing docudrama account of the 1967 Detroit riots is inevitably as concerned with the persistence of...