Seventh Row is a nonprofit Canadian film criticism publication and publishing house. We're dedicated to helping you expand your horizons by curating the best socially progressive films from around the world and helping you think deeply about them. This newsletter is run by Seventh Row (http://seventh-row.com) but features exclusive content not found on the website.
New Podcast: Chloé Zhao's Hamnet
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Chloé Zhao's Hamnet is a top contender for the Oscars. But while many found themselves weeping for large chunks of the film, I left dry-eyed. So did my guest on today’s podcast, Angelo Muredda. (And we’re easy criers. So we tried to figure out why this film didn’t work for us.) Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel — which imagines a part of Shakespeare’s life we know little about, including the courtship with his wife, the death of their son Hamnet, and the possible autobiographical links to Hamlet — the film tries to map Shakespeare’s biography onto Hamlet in ways that felt…unsatisfying. Today on the podcast, we dig into what works in the film (a short list) and what doesn’t (a longer one), and whether having read a synopsis of Hamlet on Wikipedia might actually impede your enjoyment of the film. On this episode:
Cheers, Alex |
Seventh Row
Seventh Row is a nonprofit Canadian film criticism publication and publishing house. We're dedicated to helping you expand your horizons by curating the best socially progressive films from around the world and helping you think deeply about them. This newsletter is run by Seventh Row (http://seventh-row.com) but features exclusive content not found on the website.
Hello Reader, Welcome to your January edition of The Globetrotting Watchlist. Whether you’re a longtime Globetrotting Watchlist subscriber or Film Adventurer/Cinephile Member, or just finding your way here, thank you. Your support helps to keep Seventh Row nonprofit, ad-free, and fiercely independent. What's Inside the Globetrotting Newsletter This month, I'm recommending the best documentaries of 2025: A Spanish film about bullfighting (no interest in bullfighting required) A German movie...
Near the end of Sound of Falling (the film I discuss on this week's Seventh Row Podcast), Angelika (the blurry figure in the photograph below) poses uncomfortably for a family photo in the 1980s before disappearing. How we read this photo — and what it means that she's blurry in it — is something we can only construct from the film's form: How this image evokes ones we've seen before in the film's 1914, 1940s, and present-day timelines. And how the scenes leading up to this — not just plot...
Every year since I started voting in critics’ awards, I’ve engaged in the time-honoured tradition of effectively spoiling my ballot. In other words, I vote for my favourite picks, even if they have zero chance of being nominated by anyone else. For an insight into my proclivities, in 2023, this was my Best Actor lineup: Alessandro Borghi, The Eight Mountains (Italy/Belgium)Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers (UK)Benoît Magimel, Pacifiction (France/Spain)Luca Marinelli, The Eight Mountains...