Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

Coming Back to Bite: The Earth Births its Curious Gifts in Blood Quantum

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Reviewed by Robert Sullivan
NYRB

Blood Quantum is an old-school zombie film, as opposed to the recent onslaught of AMC Walking Dead wannabes. Like George Romero’s 1968 classic, Night of the Living Dead—which ends when a Black man emerges unscathed after a night fighting off the undead, only to be shot by an all-white militia—the blood and guts add up to a social critique. What makes Blood Quantum a credit to its genre is the way it honors indigenous filmmaking, in particular the work of Alanis Obomsawin, the renowned eighty-eight-year-old Abenaki filmmaker who has, in more than fifty films, chronicled the modern liberal governments of the US and Canada laying siege to North American indigenous communities. [Read more…]

Quentin Tarantino Pure Cinema Podcast

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Elric, Brian, Phil and Jules are joined remotely by Quentin Tarantino himself for an epic discussion about a great feature on the New Beverly website called “Tarantino’s Reviews” where QT has been writing his own articles on movies and TV episodes. He also offers five of his own picks in response to our “Ripoffs” from way back in 2017.

Sites Of Love And Desire In Lari Pittman: Declaration Of Independence

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at Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (through January 5)
Reviewed by Lita Barrie

Lari Pittman’s momentous retrospective at Hammer Museum, is not only the most ambitious exhibition organized by the museum but arguably the most important exhibition anywhere in the country — or perhaps the world, today. This career-spanning exhibition of 80 densely layered monumental paintings and 50 vibrant works on paper ends the decade on a jubilant note because as the curator Connie Butler says, “the show is really about revelation.” [Read more…]

Memories and Despair: The 10 Best Films of the Year

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by Alci Rengifo

The year 2019 was reflected in its cinema like few before it. Fittingly, the decade closes with movies that obsessively gazed upon the passage of time and the social realities which are setting parts of the world aflame. It is hard for the art of an era to escape its dominant forces. Since 2016, history has moved in a strange blur, the age of Donald Trump taking on a surrealist hue. From Jordan Peele’s Us to Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, visions of class war and upheaval were expressed through dreamscapes both satirical and haunted. With another decade passing, this was also a year focused on the power of nostalgia and history’s darker edges. Martin Scorsese’s grandiose Netflix saga, The Irishman, followed a de-aged Robert De Niro through the shadowy underworld of American history. Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was pure nostalgia in its reverie, working ever so hard to revive an idea of 1969 Los Angeles. Now the question is if the 2020’s will bring hope or more gazing at what has passed, with fear of what is to come. [Read more…]

The Aesthetic Of Nostalgia In Once Upon A Time … In Hollywood

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By Alci Rengifo

Nostalgia has replaced epochs in the modern culture. There is the increasing feeling that while technology certainly races ahead in its advancement, culturally we are obsessively looking to the past. Vinyl is sought after by the kids who are convinced it sounds better than digitally remastered albums on CD or streaming. The look of videotape is being recreated for music videos and even entire film projects. Music scores are reviving the techno sheen of the 1980s. Millennials, having just missed out on the 80s and consuming art while growing up highly influenced by the 70s, are desperate to reach back. With consumer culture now defining the times and creating stagnation in any new art forms or styles, the past takes on a new glow. But few filmmakers can make art out of nostalgia quite like Quentin Tarantino. His new film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, defines nostalgia itself. In its look and sound it feels like a brain working in overdrive to recall a specific moment in its archived history. [Read more…]

Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time … In Hollywood Is A Messy And Wild Love Letter To…Hollywood

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Reviewed by Kristy Puchko

For his ninth (and possibly penultimate) film, Quentin Tarantino takes audiences back to the summer of 1969, where Hollywood was swinging and hippies seemed a harmless subculture. That is until the Manson Family murdered Sharon Tate and her friends in her mansion on Cielo Drive. Blending fact with lots of fiction, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood re-imagines this time as the fairytale its title suggests. But instead of white knights and princes, Tarantino offers stuntmen and TV cowboys. Instead of castles and lavish balls, he presents a celebrity-stuffed party at the Playboy mansion. Instead of an evil sorcerer or monster horde, there’s Charles Manson and his minions. And instead of a princess as a damsel in distress, Tarantino presents an enchanting ingénue who was killed in her prime. [Read more…]

Christoph Waltz’s Savagely Clever Directorial Debut In Georgetown

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Reviewed by Kristy Puchko

At 53, Austrian-German actor Christoph Waltz became an unlikely Hollywood star. After decades working in German film and television, he broke through with Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. Despite being an unknown stateside, despite starring opposite A-lister Brad Pitt, despite being tasked with playing a ruthless and giddily zealous Nazi, Waltz stole the spotlight, then earned his first Academy Award.  [Read more…]

Fuller On Fuller

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Samantha Fuller Speaks to the Life and Legacy of Her Father, Director Sam Fuller

by Cynthia Biret

A Fuller Life is a special tribute to maverick filmmaker Samuel Fuller, directed by his daughter Samantha. Fuller was a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood. His raw and unbridled stories favored the underdog and dared to question and highlight the grim reality of war, racism and manipulation from experiences that he had lived first hand. Starting as a crime reporter, he enrolled himself in the infantry during World War II, exposed the horrors of concentration camps, and was awarded the Purple Heart for his bravery. His persona was bigger than life. He was known for smoking a large cigar and calling action by firing a Colt .45 into the air. From The Big Red One to Shock Corridor and White Dog, his indelible mark influenced countless directors. Scorsese once said of him, “If you don’t like the films of Samuel Fuller, then you just don’t like cinema. Or at least you don’t understand it.” [Read more…]

An Interview With Rumble’s Executive Producer Stevie Salas

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by Cynthia Biret

The recent documentary Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World is a revelation, from Link Wray’s monumental influence on the landscape of music, to the legendary stars paying tribute to the songs and rhythms of indigenous cultures whose struggles were hidden from history for far too long. The line up of celebrities in this documentary is impressive: Stevie Van Zandt, Martin Scorsese, Taj Mahal, Georges Clinton, Tony Bennett, Taboo, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robbie Robertson and Steven Tyler, to name a few, including Iggy Pop, who owes his decision to become a musician to Link Wray’s infamous power cord.

Link Wray & His Wray Men, “Rumble” (1958) [Read more…]

American Animals Is A Doc-Fiction That’s Wild Fun And Deeply Disturbing

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Reviewed by Kristy Puchko

There’s something inherently slippery about true crime documentary, where cold hard facts collide with interview subjects whose testimonies might be less than reliable. Filmmakers might be able to pin down what happened, but the why is so much trickier; and the how can be the ultimate mystery. Moviegoers like to think a documentary is the distilled truth. But in Bart Layton’s work, this daring documentarian challenges that concept by relishing in the conflicting accounts of convicted criminals, who may have confessed, but still strive to save face. [Read more…]

Stranger Things: An Apostate In The Age Of Conformism

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by Alci Rengifo

One of the great oddities of our present moment is the overwhelming sense of stubborn conformism. The need to relish in specific designer trends and pose in the aesthetic of the middle or upper class is so strong that the rebels now find themselves shunned in popular media. The pressures of establishing oneself in a solid career and making a respectable income have turned collegial life into a Darwinian landscape of predatory competitiveness, where attainment of status supersedes any real intellectual growth. Do your homework, prove you can recite what the lecture told you, and off you go. [Read more…]

Fish Tank

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CINEMA DISORDINAIRE

Reviewed by A. O. Scott

Mia, the 15-year-old protagonist of Fish Tank (2009), Andrea Arnold’s tough and brilliant second feature, moves with such speed and fury that she seems to be trying to flee not only from her bleak surroundings but also from the movie itself. The narrow, nearly square frame boxes Mia in, and Ms. Arnold’s on-the-run hand-held tracking shots increase the sense of panicky claustrophobia. Living in a cramped apartment in a British housing project that stands like a cluster of megaliths in the middle of nowhere, Mia is at once trapped and adrift, unable to contain or to express the feelings seething beneath the blank, sullen mien she usually presents to the world. [Read more…]