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2020 Chattanooga Film Festival

June 3, 2020

Festival Coverage by Zach Dennis and Reid Ramsey

For four days in May, the 7th annual Chattanooga Film Festival screened more than 25 feature films (and dozens of shorts) spanning indie horror, documentaries, and cult classics from around the world alongside Q&A sessions with Ice-T and Joe Dante as well as workshops and live podcast recordings. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival shifted from its April date to a May weekend that was hosted completely virtually courtesy of Microsoft. Zach and Reid were able to catch up with around six features and the Tennessee Shorts block while watching the festival online and from home.

Colin Firth and Jon Kortajarena in director Tom Ford’s A Single Man

A Single Man (2009) by Tom Ford

June 1, 2020

Retro Review by Ash Baker

While I’m certainly not advocating for narratives that teeter on dangerous clichés, I think it would be dishonest if the LGBT community abandoned “sad” movies. The LGBT community is as diverse as any other, and while we are proud and happy, we are also complex human beings who are capable of sadness, fear, anger, and doubt. I’m not afraid of “sad” LGBT movies; I just want to know that, in the end, we’ll be okay.

The History of the Seattle Mariners (2020) by Jon Bois

May 25, 2020

Review by Etan Weisfogel

Jon Bois tells stories — specifically, as the subtitle for his first video series SBNation noted, “true stories that are pretty good.” But often these stories have already been told, experienced live by thousands of fans and broadcast on national television for millions of viewers at home. The dilemma Bois faces is one faced by any person attempting to dramatize, or re-dramatize, the events of a professional sports game. What combination of shots and cuts could possibly compare to the game-winning home run as experienced in its original form, presented in exactly the same manner as a first-inning groundout or a routine fly ball?

Scoob! (2020) by Tony Cervone

May 18, 2020

Review by Logan Kenny

The creators of Scoob! have put more effort into being more like everything else on the market for children’s animated films instead of taking the easier and better route of just making a great Scooby Doo movie for a new generation of kids!

SXSW 2020 Shorts Program

May 11, 2020

Festival Coverage by Jessica Carr

Amazon Prime Video & SXSW came together to showcase a small portion of the films that were going to screen at the festival. The filmmakers who opted to participate had their shorts streamed on Amazon Prime from April 27 to May 6. I was able to catch 6 short films that were featured in the program. Although I thought the overall lineup was pretty limited, I tried to watch the short films that I found most appealing. It was nice to see fresh films from upcoming filmmakers even at a limited capacity.

Some Kind of Connection (2020) by Sophy Romvari and Mike Thorn

May 4, 2020

Interview by Zach Dennis

Many people are doing their best to process the current state of the world amidst the coronavirus pandemic, and attempting to do anything creative has become impossible. While an onslaught of projects will percolate in the future related to this time in quarantine, it will be difficult to find one that resonates quite like Sophy Romvari and Mike Thorn’s short film, Some Kind of Connection. Cinematary spoke with Romvari and Thorn about making the movie, how they started their romance and then were quickly swept up in a pandemic lockdown, how the collaboration process has helped in the making of Sophy’s films, and what they’re watching and thinking about art in the age of the coronavirus.

Director Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers stars alongside Violet Nelson in Tailfeathers’s film The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open — Director Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers stars alongside Violet Nelson in Tailfeathers’s film *The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open*

The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open (2019) by Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn

April 27, 2020

Review by Julianna Ramsey

The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open feels less like a story and more like a window – a glimpse into the contentious but tender encounter between two real women, with danger lingering just out of frame.

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Tigertail (2020) by Alan Yang

April 20, 2020

Review by Jessica Carr

Films like Tigertail can help audiences everywhere develop stronger empathy for other immigrants and understand their experiences, and I hope they also inspire immigrants to tell their own stories – or entrust those stories to someone close to them so they can share it with the world.

Pink Flamingos (1972) by John Waters

April 13, 2020

Retro Review by Ash Baker

Before embarking on the journey to Divine’s pepto-bismol-pink mobile home, Cookie says to her employers, “I may have to degrade myself.” This is the mindset I believe everyone should take into watching Pink Flamingos, a movie that asks its audience to laugh at such horrors as incest, kidnapping, murder, cannibalism, and many other acts of unapologetic filth.

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There Was a Father (1942) by Yasujirō Ozu

April 6, 2020

Retro Review by Zach Dennis

There Was a Father carries a pastoral setting and nostalgia for a pre-war naiveté. Much like the other Japanese master, Ozu finds a small oasis among the modern angst to remember another time, though with the foresight of the wisdom of years to guide him.

Cinematary Canon #13: Quarantine Cinema

March 30, 2020

By Alison Swafford, Courtney Anderson, Zach Dennis, Eva Zee, Nadine Smith, Michael O’Malley, Lucy Palmer, Nick Armstrong, and Logan Kenny

The twelve films presented here are grouped into two categories: confronting the crisis and escaping the crisis. In the first half of the list, you’ll find write-ups of six films that, in one way or another, speak to the phenomena of widespread illness, government intervention, and self-quarantine that our writers are currently living through as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic of spring 2019. In the second half, you’ll find write-ups of six completely unrelated films that our writers are using to find solace in these uncertain times.

Note: Contagion is too obvious.

The Wind Rises (2013) by Hayao Miyazaki

March 23, 2020

Retro Review by Cam Watson

Miyazaki’s impact on animation is massive. However, there has always seemed to be some dissonance between the way Miyazaki is received and the way he views his own career. The Wind Rises unpacks that dissonance in a satisfying way, while managing to incorporate a powerfully realistic emotional core.

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Wexner Cinema Revival 2020

March 16, 2020

Festival Coverage by Miranda Barnewall

Back for its sixth year, the Wexner Center for the Arts, located in the heart of The Ohio State University’s campus, hosted its annual film festival, Cinema Revival: A Festival of Film Restoration. As the name implies, this festival is a celebration of film preservation and screens recent preservation projects from the past year. Included in the festival’s program are discussions of techniques and challenges in film preservation. I was lucky enough to attend the majority of the festival (Thursday through Sunday), and have chosen to talk about the films and events that struck me the most. Because this festival is focused on preservation, I talk about the preservation issues and explanations surrounding these projects when possible.

Mia Goth and Anya Taylor-Joy star in director Autumn de Wilde’s Emma. — Mia Goth and Anya Taylor-Joy star in director Autumn de Wilde’s *Emma.*

Emma. (2020) by Autumn de Wilde

March 9, 2020

Review by Maggie Frank

Taylor-Joy makes a good Emma by communicating as much with her manner as with her delivery. She opens a door with one finger. Her face freezes and falls at her faux pas.

Kris Hitchen stars in director Ken Loach’s new film Sorry We Missed You — Kris Hitchen stars in director Ken Loach’s new film *Sorry We Missed You*

Sorry We Missed You (2020) by Ken Loach

March 2, 2020

Review by Reece Beckett

Loach’s film is truly upsetting and really quite sickening, but it is his passionate observation of these vile problems that is really quite hopeful; our voice can still be heard, and so long as our voice is heard, change can still be made.

Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin star in It’s Complicated by director Nancy Myers — *Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin star in* It’s Complicated *by director Nancy Myers*

It's Complicated (2009) by Nancy Meyers

February 24, 2020

Retro Review by Will Carr

Meyers’s strict adherence to the romance formula has made it easy for critics to dismiss her work, but her 2009 film It’s Complicated provides the perfect framework for what a Nancy Myers movie can be.

Birds of Prey (2019) by Cathy Yan

February 17, 2020

Review by Courtney Anderson

Birds of Prey has arrived to show us that the DCEU knows how to lean into the wackiness without sacrificing style and tone. Birds of Prey is a flashy, colorful, topsy-turvy blast of a film.

Gretel & Hansel (2020) by Osgood Perkins

February 10, 2020

Review by Alison Swafford

There’s no breadcrumb trail in Gretel & Hansel. No gingerbread house, either. The menacing old woman at the dark heart of the story lives in a postmodernist isosceles art piece. Rather than being a one-dimensional cannibal, she’s a witch operating by her own lore – her magic powers evident in a pitch-black pigmentation running down her fingers. All this is to say that Gretel & Hansel, the new grimdark fairy tale horror adaptation by Osgood Perkins, is weird.

Taylor Swift gets bad news over the phone – one of the star’s many unguarded moments captured by Lana Wilson’s documentary Miss Americana — Taylor Swift gets bad news over the phone – one of the star’s many unguarded moments captured by Lana Wilson’s documentary *Miss Americana*

Miss Americana (2020) by Lana Wilson

February 3, 2020

Review by Michael O’Malley

As tempting as it might be to imagine the muckraking documentary that could have been, these limitations also make up what’s sneakily great about Miss Americana. By never really allowing the documentary to break from Taylor Swift’s perspective, director Lana Wilson creates a movie in which Swift is basically talking to herself about her own thoughts, experiences, and memories. Miss Americana becomes about the dialectic within Taylor Swift: what Taylor Swift thinks about herself.

George MacKay stars in director Sam Mendes’s 1917 — George MacKay stars in director Sam Mendes’s *1917*

1917 (2019) by Sam Mendes

January 27, 2020

Review by Logan Kenny

Mendes has no aim, he has no political foundations other than the idea he should represent “the stories of war” without getting into what they mean, why they mean it, and why these people deserve to be remembered. It is a hollow husk, a decrepit abyss of hamfisted bullshit, that adds no value asides from a bunch of technical feats that don’t even make the movie any better.