Cinema Scope 48 Preview: Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico) – Contemporary World Cinema By Adam Nayman The opening sequence of Miss Bala clings closely to its main character while coyly denying us a look at her face for as long as possible. This is partly because the build-up is worth it—star Stephanie Sigman is as…

Cinema Scope 48 Preview: A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg, Canada/Germany) By Richard Porton The title of Russell Jacoby’s 1983 polemic, The Repression of Psychoanalysis, suggests that the radical implications of the Freudian tradition have become muddled in an era where nothing seems more safely middle-class than a session on the couch with the shrink of…

Cinema Scope 48 Preview: Nicolas Winding Refn and the Search for a Real Hero By Robert Koehler “Hey, do you wanna see somethin’?”—Driver in Drive In the middle of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, a film punctuated by extreme flourishes of violence and vengeance, there is a period of peace. It occurs when Driver (Ryan Gosling),…

Conventional wisdom says that a film festival jury should always have a talent spread; that is, a director here, an actor there, perhaps a critic or an academic or a programmer tossed in for good measure. This is because, as a rule, in every unscientific study ever done on the matter, directors and actors tend to select more conservatively, close to the mainstream, while non-filmmaking folk tend to lean more radically