Scott Foundas

A City of Sadness

A City of Sadness: The Great 1989 Taiwanese Film at LACMA

Scott Foundas
An extraordinarily ambitious sociohistorical epic, comparable in its impact to the Godfather films, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 1989 A City of Sadness traces the tragic personal and political fortunes of the people of Taiwan in the years following World War II, when the Japanese ceded control of the island nation to Chiang......
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That Old Time Religion

Scott Foundas
I have more to say about Bruno Dumont's exceptional Hadewijch in the latest issue of Cinema Scope magazine, but to briefly summarize: Somewhat like The Sound of Music without the music, Dumont's film follows a troublesome young novitiate (extraordinary newcomer Julie Sokolowski) as she is turned loose by the mothers......
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LACMA Film Program Saved? Not So Fast.

Scott Foundas
I wondered if I was sounding too sour a note when I suggested, in a September 2 editorial, that Los Angeles moviegoers shouldn't be entirely exempted form blame regarding the recent decision of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to suspend and reconfigure its 41-year-old film series. Even after......

Dweeb Central

Scott Foundas
Having recently been deemed a "hermetic, esoteric film dweeb" -- if not directly, then by association -- by Hollywood Elsewhere pundit, armchair sociologist and indisputable leader of the cool kids Jeffrey Wells, I figured I might as well add some fuel to the fire by linking here to the second......
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Only Connect!

Scott Foundas
Given that in the past two weeks I have passed through eight different airports and slept in four different hotels, there were times during Jason Reitman's new film, Up in the Air, that I felt I was watching my own life pass before my eyes. That and the fact that,......
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Propaganda, War

Scott Foundas
The Toronto International Film Festival doesn't exactly have a reputation for being a lightning rod for political controversy, but it became one in the early days of this year's edition thanks to a new festival sidebar, City to City, designed to explore "the evolving urban experience by immersing audiences in......
Joe Berlinger’s remarkable documentary Crude

Crude: A Sticky Situation

Scott Foundas
Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. Why? Because it’s thick with sludge. Moving briskly through a stranger-than-fiction, serpentine narrative that is still unfolding, Joe Berlinger’s remarkable documentary Crude recounts an infuriating litany of South American exploitation, backroom glad-handing and bureaucratic dead ends that has, among other collateral......
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Down the Dante Hole

Scott Foundas
A funny thing happened on my way to this year's Toronto International Film Festival: I detoured through Venice, where the world's oldest film festival, the Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica di Venezia, had invited me to serve on the jury for its inaugural Persol 3D award. The competition consisted of seven......
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Girls On Skates, Geezer with Guns

Scott Foundas
Maybe it was the phalanx of real-life roller derby girls high-fiving everyone at the entrance to the Ryerson Theatre, or perhaps the irrepressibly perky Drew Barrymore just touches a particular sweet spot in the hearts and minds of the Toronto Film Festival's unapologetically positivist, always-happy-to-see-a-movie-star public audience. Whatever the case:......