Category: New Movies

How comedian/filmmaker Gary Eck plans to use cutting-edge technology to realise his sci-fi opus, Amygdala.

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Gary Eck’s first encounter with the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) was one of trepidation: “My son wanted my details to buy an app to start generating NFTS of his own art. I was apprehensive at first, but soon it was me who was hooked, going down the rabbit hole, and by the end, I was saying ‘This is fucking genius!’”

In an act of strange serendipity, Eck’s exposure to this emerging technology happened to coincide with the development of his high-concept sci-fi feature film Amygdala. Set in a brutal dystopian future, Amygdala sees prisoners incarcerated in ‘Mindmares’, fiendish virtual realities that exploit their greatest fears, all of which are broadcast to bloodthirsty viewers.

With echoes of evocative films like The

2022 marks the birth centenary of the great filmmaker, writer, and intellectual Pier Paolo Pasolini. To celebrate his legacy, Fireflies Press has published a new book, Pier Paolo Pasolini: Writing on Burning Paper, featuring reflections from Mike Leigh, Helena Wittman, Alexandre Koberidze, Jia Zhangke, Angela Schanelec, and many other filmmakers on the powerful influence the auteur continues to exert on contemporary cinema.

To discuss the book and reflect on Pasolini’s life and work, Film Comment’s Devika Girish and Clinton Krute sat down with Giovanni Marchini Camia, co-publisher of Fireflies Press, and filmmaker Radu Jude, one of the contributors to Writing on Burning Paper. Among other great insights, Giovanni reveals how the title of the book—and in fact, the name “Fireflies Press” itself—was inspired by Pasolini’s writings, and  Radu recalls his first encounters with Pasolini’s work at the Romanian Cinematheque in Bucharest in the early ’90s.

This article appeared in the November 17, 2022 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing. Sign up for the Letter here.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Ryan Coogler, 2022)

Since its release in 2018, writer-director Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther has occupied an odd, some might say uncomfortable, position in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Here is a film that dared to fold the hackneyed formal elements of the superhero genre—cacophonous action, self-aware humor, Easter eggs, cameos, dutiful setups for future sequels—into an earnest drama about Blackness, diaspora, and colonial violence. Audiences who might have expected typical, bland MCU triumphalism were instead presented with a complex portrayal of the friction between Africa and its diaspora; a critique of the theft of cultural artifacts by colonizing nations; and a striking, Afrofuturistic depiction of a technologically advanced African nation whose resources and science are sought-after

On the heels of his 2021 film The Grand Duke of Corsica, UK-based Australian director Daniel Graham is back with the highly anticipated, Prizefighter: The Life of Jem Belcher.

Based on the 19th Century boxer, who became the world’s youngest boxing champion, the film stars Matt Hookings as the prize-fighter, as he is guided by trainer Bill Warr (Ray Winstone) and raised by his grandfather Jack Slack (Russell Crowe).

FilmInk caught up with Graham to talk about the challenges of making his latest and what’s ahead.

How did Prizefighter begin? it’s quite different to your previous two films.

“When I came back from Mexico finishing Opus Zero, I started to contact producers in England to work together on projects. And one of the few who answered was Matt Hookings from Camelot films. We’re talking early 2017, so actually almost five and a bit years ago.  What happened then

To hell with “all is calm.”

From the bare-knuckle producers of Nobody, Bullet Train, Nobody, John Wick, Atomic Blonde and Deadpool 2, comes a coal-dark holiday action-comedy that says you should always bet on red.

When a team of mercenaries breaks into a wealthy family compound on Christmas Eve, taking everyone inside hostage, the team isn’t prepared for a surprise combatant: Santa Claus (David Harbour) is on the grounds, and he’s about to show why this Nick is no saint.

The film also stars John Leguizamo, Cam Gigandet, Alex Hassell (Cowboy Bebop), Alexis Louder (The Tomorrow War), Edi Patterson (The Righteous Gemstones) and the legendary Beverly D’Angelo.

Directed by razor-edged Norwegian Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow) and written by Pat Casey and Josh Miller (Sonic the Hedgehog), VIOLENT NIGHT is Christmas movie that will give Die Hard