M. Leary

McSweeney’s has posted the definitive list. Including: Horse Running for 30 Seconds and Theodore Roosevelt Shakes the Hands of Many

We can now say with Heisenberg certainty that the Coen brothers tried to be serious filmmakers.

Splats of mud in Munyurangabo, the unexpected drift of the lens in Revanche, the train passages in 35 Shots of Rum, the ecstatic beginning of The Headless Woman, the en plein air end of Summer Hours. This year of cinema was rife with memorable shots and sequences from so many different contexts and technologies. I […]

It is hard to believe that this film made the festival rounds up to four years ago, but will now be popping up on critic’s lists for 2009 as it has finally had an actual theatrical run this year. The Sun is the final installment of a three part series of Sokurov biopics covering a […]

If you have never seen any of Marie Menken’s films, watch the three shorts included on the Icarus DVD release of Martina Kudlácek’s recent documentary about her kindly influence on the American avant-garde. These films will probably first strike you as overwrought, minor, or the practice footage of some film student with a Bolex. Glimpses […]

But the initial dread I felt was that of the tourist, discomforted by an unexpected climate, a different way of negotiating crowds, or making it across town. The squat architecture of Moscow lends itself to a certain mythic eeriness in the winter months. As the film slowly moves towards Moscow, these milling groups of people Akerman are filming start to become denser and less interested in her tracking camera. The lines become longer even if the railway stations look grander.

The NFB has just released Animated Express, a wonderful set of animated shorts on DVD and Blu-ray that includes Chris Landreth’s recent The Spine. The production is similar to that of his innovative multi-media CGI classic Ryan, though now technology has advanced enough to render his harrowing psychological vision of our roiling mental innards in […]

Alonso’s Liverpool plays at the 2009 St. Louis International Film Festival.

I was happy to be part of the institution of a new annual award at the St. Louis International Film Festival called the Midrash St. Louis Film Award. Last night we went to the gala award ceremony and were happy to present a sizable cash prize to Chris Grega, director of the indomitable Game of […]