I recently saw an advertisement for an intensive film and theology course at a local seminary, and it jogged loose a few thoughts about how these courses are typically conducted. It is not my intention to lampoon this upcoming event, as I am happy to see any hint of good cinema becoming part of the […]
If you flinch while you watch Tyrannosaur, that is the right response. For an angry person, a flinch is a form of communication. It is a sign that their grievance, nameless as it may be, has been heard and felt by someone else. There isn’t anything therapeutic about the chain of events that results in […]
(ed. note: Posted on behalf of contributing writer Nathan Carter. I am happy to say that our list of contributors is about to change in some interesting ways, which will include a return of contributions from Nathan.) When The Princess and the Frog came out a couple years ago, it […]
(Ed. note: This is the first Filmwell post from Nathanael T. Booth (M.A. student in English at the University of Alabama). In a series of upcoming posts, Nathanael will be tackling detective cinema in the guise of Holmes and others. As this is a criminally under-investigated genre in this context, I am excited to watch […]
A recent longread in GQ provides a rare glimpse into the film project by Ilya Khrzhanovsky that has managed to cobble together funding for a five year Stalin-era installation in a small Ukranian city. The slow trickle of anecdotes related to this project have intimated that this is not your average film set, but this essay […]
For the record: don’t read this. If you are not familiar with the story of the Dunbars, it is best to just let this one unfold as you watch it. Whether it is the smoking Twin Towers, smoldering Branch Davidian compound, or the Zapruder film, we have all had our faces rubbed in some televised […]
One Time: A few years before we had our daughter, my wife and I were walking in the hills of Caracalla just south of Rome. About halfway through this quiet suburban park we encountered an old sheep that had recently died about five yards from the path. Several of its friends were trying to nuzzle it […]
The Tree of Life is not my favorite Malick film. It is a great experience, and it is saturated with great thoughts about fatherhood, sonship, and the cosmic significance of what happens to us as children. But it lacks the continental vigor that gave birth to Days of Heaven and decades later, The New World, which […]
Jeffrey alerted me to the fact that the new cinema scope cover looks like this: This title is quite similar to the tag line that accompanied the launch of Filmwell years ago: Is this a film blog? We were way ahead of the curve there. The […]