Artist and director John Waters, known for off-kilter cult favorites as Pink Flamingos and Serial Mom, has been subverting common themes — religion, domesticity, glamour and fame — throughout his career. A prolific artist, alongside films, Waters has been creating still photo-based work since the early 1990s. His latest show, a photographic exhibition called Beverly Hills John, has, after a successful […]
‘Hot Girls Wanted’: Stereotypes and Realities of Amateur Porn
This week, Netflix began airing Hot Girls Wanted, a Rashida Jones-produced porn doc that seeks to document a group of young amateur performers as they take their first steps in the porn industry. The five girls — all of them under 20 and new to the business — are recruited via Craiglist ads by Miami-based production company Hussie Models, and lured in with promises of fast, easy […]
Rose McGowan’s ‘Dawn’ Debuts Online
Rose McGowan’s directorial debut, Dawn, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year, is a slow-burning gem: critically lauded and technically accomplished, it is a visually striking, affecting coming-of-age story that tugs at the heartstrings the more it reveals its menacing underbelly—a mature, accomplished movie from a new director with a startling clarity of vision. Dawn tells the story of a teenage […]
The Tribe, Love & Mercy, A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting on Existence: June’s Essential Movies
There is more to the June cinematic calendar than Summer blockbusters. Outside of the mega-million franchise scene, the hearts of smaller independent movies beat on. Here are this month’s best. The Tribe Director: Myroslav Slaboshpytsky Starring: Grigoriy Fesenko, Yana Novikova, Rosa Babiy, Alexander Dsiadevich, Yaroslav Biletskiy, Ivan Tishko, Alexander Osadchiy, Alexander Sidelnikov, Alexander Panivan Opens June 17th One of the […]
Shannyn Sossamon: Wild Attraction
Shannyn Sossamon has an unforgettable face. The kind of face that can, and did, launch a career. A face that goes with a name you may not instantly recall, though will, most certainly, recognize. Though her original ambitions, upon embarking for the City of Angels from Hawaii, focused more on her body than her face, and on technique rather than […]
Marie’s Story, Welcome to Me, Sunshine Superman, The Connection: May’s Essential Movies
Kristen Wiig surprises us with a movie that’s funny and smart, while the story of Marie Heurtin—a young girl born blind and deaf in 19th Century France—tugs at the heartstrings: these and more of May’s best new movies. Welcome To Me Director: Shira Piven Starring: Kristen Wiig, James Marsden, Linda Cardellini Opens May 1st In one of the most […]
The Nude Avant-Garde: Bertrand Bonello
French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello is at the center of a complete retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City, which will run April 29 through May 4. The retrospective, I Put a Spell on You: The Films of Bertrand Bonello will feature a preview, including a Q&A with the director itself, of Bonello’s recent film Saint Laurent, as well as […]
Some New World Order for you to Observe: On Furious 7 and the State of Things
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t’s hard to believe that it’s been fourteen years since we first saw Paul Walker and Vin Diesel ride or die and wax poetic on the nature of honor. 2001’s The Fast and the Furious was fun, but it was dumb fun. If you’d have told me that I’d be in a theatre seven films later, watching almost everyone from […]
Erotica and Subversion: The Films of Walerian Borowczyk
Perhaps the best description of master eroticist filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk’s is that of a “genius who was also a pornographer.” An apt description of a man who, throughout his prolific film career that spanned over four decades, directed over 40 films that have come to inhabit the cult pornography canon. Yet ‘pornography’ is also not the most accurate descriptor for […]