Movie Magazine International Blog

By Moira Jean Sullivan The Exorcist made in 1973 is a classic because its construction commands new audiences ever since its conception by William Friedkin. The film initially was about a professor Chris MacNeil who wants to help her students who are sitting out and missing classes because of a bad university administration. She has a daughter who has become possessed. The film establishes the point of contact from an evil spirit in Northern Iraq that Father Merrin (played by Max von Sydow) out on a dig has gotten mixed up with and he is a presence that the evil spirit fears. Somehow the spirit makes its way to Georgetown and possesses Regan (Linda Blair). Ellen Burstyn plays her mother beset with grief in trying to fix her daughter and enlists the help of Roman Catholic priests who live close by their home. As a famous actress she asks the priests to heal her daughter and she's magnificent in this role. She implores them to conduct an exorcism which requires special permi...

By Moira Sullivan Movie Magazine International was at Cannes again for the 10th time at the 77th Festival de Cannes. What I was looking forward to at this festival was of course the documentary on Faye Dunaway: Faye by French American Laurent Bouzereau held in the Cannes Classics venue in Salle Buñuel where I always can get a seat. Faye (2024) © Festival de Cannes Faye Dunaway loves the Cannes Film Festival and her image was the poster for 2011. I have stood in line in the past with her waiting to get into the Agnes Varda Theatre till an usher recognized who she is and took her in to the front row. She goes to the seminars and asks great questions; she’s a real Cineaste! So the debut of this new documentary film at Cannes Classics Faye  was really something to look forward to.  Dunaway has had her share of difficulties, on the set, and she has recently revealed  that she has bipolar disorder. Some of the roles that she’s taken on of people in real life makes me w...

By Moira Jean Sullivan The poster for George Millers’ 2024  Furiosa A Mad Max Saga  features the towering War Lord of the Biker Horde Dementus (Chris Elmworth) standing above Furiosa, eclipsing her. This is a prequel to  Mad Max: Fury Road  by Australian director George Miller who decided to cast Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger Furiosa, instead of Charlize Theron. The film seems to have a more polished look compared to its predecessor, with modern and updated elements. However, some may miss the intricate details and character development seen in the previous film. Editor and Academy Award winner Margaret Sixel has changed her editing style where character development has given way to scenic cinematography. Continuity editing added illustrious depth to the characters and fight scenes of  Mad Max: Fury Road . The prequel has a different feel and lacks strong female characters, with Furiosa, and minor characters. This includes her mother Mary Jabassa and Vuvalini...

By Moira Jean Sullivan OLYMPIC Moves was the slogan of the 46th Créteil International Women's Film Festival preceding the 2024 Olympics in Paris in July. The opening film was Hard, Fast and Beautiful by Ida Lupino (1951) about a young tennis player caught between the plans for her career made by her mother and coach and a young man she's met who loves tennis. Another sport film, the French documentary on the Olympique Lyonnais women's team, Les joueuses (The Squad 2020) is about one of the best football teams in the world , written and directed by Stéphanie Gillard. The French director also made The Ride (2011) about the 300-mile journey by horseback by Lakota Sioux through the South Dakota Badlands.  Both films were co- produced by the Rouge International team - Julie Gayet and Nadia Turincev. Ironically, I am back from the Créteil film festival that connects to the Paris metro system. Its a long hike from Opéra to Créteil and the metro tunnels, ramps and stairwa...

By Moira Jean Sullivan Nyad is now out on Netflix starring Jodie Foster and Annette Bening about Diana Nyad, a courageous 60+ woman who would not give up her dream of swimming 110 miles from Cuba to Miami. The film tackles the universal question of how great athletes co-exist with their environment. The answer is that nothing exists in a vacuum even a famous solo swimmer in a volatile ocean. A dynamic skilled team is assembled to work with Nyad including her personal assistant Bonnie (Jodie Foster), young deep sea swimmers who put up shark screens, a marine biologist who's well versed in the dangers of jellyfish, John Bartlett - her navigator, and others in a team of about 40 people who accompany Nyad on this Olympian swim to Miami. It's not a straight trajectory with several setbacks before she finally succeeds. It's a plus that the film is set up like that but one can't help being a bit irritated with Nyad’s egotistical personality though there are compelling ...

Born in Flames (1983) © Lizzie Borden Lizzie Borden was guest of honor at the 45th Créteil Films de Femmes festival held March 24 to April 2. Her work was enthusiastically received by a new generation of cinéastes with seminars on her trilogy of films: Regrouping (1976), Born in Flames (1983) and Working Girls (1986). Born in Flames ’ relevance today is illustrated by its intersectionality of race, gender and class that debunks the myth that feminism was a 'white women's movement'. Featuring Kathryn Bigelow as a member of a youth socialist feminist journal, the setting is 10 years after the Socialist Revolution in the US. Borden took seven years to make the film and acquire funding. The brilliant editing of Born in Flames resembles the 'choreographic' editing of Borden’s first film, the documentary Regrouping made in 1976 on four artists in a women’s group. During the course of the film project, Borden introduced other women into the original group and created ...

Blue Jean is set in 1988 after Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government has introduced Section 28, a clause of the Local Government Act which seeks to prohibit “the promotion of homosexuality” by local authorities across the United Kingdom. The clause is directed towards the 'pretend' relationships of lesbians and gay men. Jean is a a high school gym teacher who must keep her life as a lesbian secret at work and cannot risk being open about her relationship with Viv (Kerrie Hayes)   even to her family. The film style by director/writer Georgia Oakley has the look and feel of a film from the 80's. Shot in 16mm the cinematography spotlights run down housing and establishments and an atmosphere that reeks of the butchery of human rights.  Oakley creates an authentic environment at the high school where Jean works. The script written by Oakley is directed towards internalised homophobia of the characters. The enrolment of a new student Lois (Lucy Halliday) who begin...

Mary Harron was a special guest at the San Francisco International Film Festival in April.I had the opportunity to interview her from Sweden after returning from the Créteil International Women's Film Festival in March 24 – April 2. Harron is probably one of the best female auteur filmmakers who writes and directs her own films. She has a very eclectic body of work and her latest film is Daliland about the Spanish filmmaker and surrealist artist Salvador Dalí.  His signature in popular culture is his extravagant looking moustache turned up at the ends held in place with hair oil.  Dalíland takes place when Dalí is 70 years old with flashbacks to his younger years with his muse and Russian wife Gala and the mature Gala is played by the magnificent Barbara Sukowa. Dalí is a curiosity for young people, but he does not impress the film critics of his time when he was in his 70s. He is shown milling around at celebrity parties in the art world where people show up to be ...

At the 76th Cannes Film Festival it was announced that more than 60 hours of rushes of Agnes Varda’s 2000 documentary feature The Gleaners and I will now be available for the next generation of international filmmakers thanks to a new educational initiative from France’s National Audiovisual Institute (INA) and Ciné-Tamaris (Agnès Varda's company run by her daughter Rosalie Varda).  The five-year project offers students a bilingual platform available 24/7 where they can view and download the complete collection of rushes in addition to the edited film in addition to educational materials like photos and press kits from the period of the film’s release.  The innovative indexing technique uses artificial intelligence and documentary engineering techniques, applied for the first time to film footage. Students will be able to search for words and pull footage with specific images or merge unused interviews with footage that did make it into the film to create their own spin....

Aki Kaurismaki's new film  Fallen Leaves  is a comedy in a world he feels has very little left of humanity. He wastes no time to not give his opinion about other filmmakers or even his own films that he never sees -- all except Chaplin who he says is the best due to his simplicity. That sums up the Finnish director whose simple responses to questions about the world, other filmmakers and his own work is deadpan humor of the highest order. And in subtle ways he explains aspects of his provocative fimmaking, such as that he is was not able to choose the music he likes -  Screamin' Jay Hawkins - because 'the Yankees want too many pennies". A simple revelation like this says a lot about the huge stretch between his work and commercial films that are funded without a thought to expense.  In  Fallen Leaves,  Alma Poysti plays Ansa, a middle aged supermarket clerk who "risks falling in love no matter how old she gets". She meets a construction worker named Holapp...