The Believer, Issue 88 March/April 2012 The Film Issue

Each year, the Believer devotes an entire issue to film. This year's March/April Film Issue features a free DVD of Laurel Nakadate's haunting—and controversial—feature film "The Wolf Knife." Following two teen girls on a doomed journey that takes them from the Florida suburbs to Nashville, Nakadate's work (introduced here by Deb Olin Unferth) examines desire, domination, and voyeurism. The issue also includes original essays by Michael Atkinson on the defunct pulp magazine The Monster Times, Adrian Van Young watching entire horror-movie franchises in a 24-hour period, Claire Harlan Orsi on slapstick as it appears in the films of the Marx Brothers—and the work of Nabokov, Theodore McDermott on the completely unacceptable films of Bobcat Goldthwait, and Lili Anolik on Deep Throat and the mainstreaming of porn. There are interviews with director Nora Ephron, actor Jeffrey Wright, and video artist Mika Rottenberg, Geoff Dyer on Tarkovsky, as well as horrible advice by Lena Dunham, columns by Nick Hornby, Daniel Handler, and Greil Marcus, and the announcement of the editors' shortlists for the Believer Book Award and the second annual Believer Poetry Award.