Gordon Thomas, trained as a painter, is a photographer living in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts with his wife. Film has fascinated and worried him ever since, as a small child, he saw Godzilla in 1954. 
Bardelys the Magnificent (King Vidor, 1926); Monte Cristo (Emmett J. Flynn, 1922) Just as they deepened our appreciation of Rudolf Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks, Flicker Alley, with this magnificent release[…]
Douglas Fairbanks, by Jeffrey Vance, with Tony Maietta. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press and Los Angeles, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 2008. Cloth, $45.00, 368 p. ISBN: 978-0-520-25667-5.[…]
Hobson’s Choice (David Lean, 1954) Approaching this film — one of two comedies Lean made in his career, the other being Blithe Spirit (1945) — you expect it to be[…]
The General (Buster Keaton, 1926) Transferred from a print struck from the original camera negative, Kino’s recent two-disc presentation of The General looks shockingly new, as if Keaton had shot[…]
“The air is saturated with their feelings for each other as they listen to ‘the distant music of the falls,’ the same falls, of course, that will threaten to kill her.”
The Italian (Reginald Barker, 1915) and Traffic in Souls (George Loane Tucker, 1913) The Italian of producer Thomas Ince’s 1915 film is Beppo Donnetti, played by George Beban in a performance[…]
La Roue (Abel Gance, 1922) Abel Gance’s La Roue is a wild poem of a movie. French audiences saw the film at its 1922 premiere in four parts over three[…]
Berlin Alexanderplatz (Phil Jutzi, 1931) Franz Biberkopf must be one of the most porous characters in all literature. In Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz, a modernist torrent — dialogue,[…]
“Jancsó’s controlled aesthetic acts as a dissonance that vibrates expressively with scenes of violence, torture, and shame.”
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Directors · Experimental & Underground
“Watkins’ filmmaking bravely seeks an insistence on personal truth his own and the viewer’s.”
“Macheath: I’m not asking you to put on an opera.” ~ Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera, Act 1, scene 2 Down the crooked lanes of London, gangster Mackie Messer stalks a[…]
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases The Valentino Collection (The Young Rajah, Moran of the Lady Letty, Stolen Moments, Society Sensation)[…]
Romeo, Juliet and Darkness (Romeo, Julia a tma) (Jiri Weiss, 1960) & The Party and the Guests (O slavnosti a hostech) (Jan Nemec, 1966) Jiri Weiss’ Holocaust drama,Romeo, Juliet and[…]
“When what you write about is what you see/ What do you write about when it’s dark?” ~ Charles Wright 1. “You’ll have to kill me to get rid of[…]
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1967) Robert Bresson’s film, Mouchette, like his previous release, Au Hasard Balthasar[…]
“It’s sort of what we have instead of God” “. . . you talk less about good movies than about what you love in bad movies.” — Pauline Kael, Trash,[…]
Night Train (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1959) Call it Train of Fools. In Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s masterwork, a crowded night express travels overbooked with the despairing, the lovelorn, the lustful, a handful of[…]
Actors & Personalities · Silents
Anyone infatuated with silent film, like me, is always on the lookout for that one pre-talkie film that will win over the unconverted, and I think I’ve found a mighty[…]
