Uneasy Living: The Insecure Charm of Jean Arthur
“Funny, tender, a little neurotic, a little erotic, and always spontaneous …” A Foreign Affair (1948) is a blunt Billy Wilder comedy set amid the ruins of Berlin, and it’s[…]
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“Funny, tender, a little neurotic, a little erotic, and always spontaneous …” A Foreign Affair (1948) is a blunt Billy Wilder comedy set amid the ruins of Berlin, and it’s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Since my esteemed Bright Lights After Dark (and Bright Lights Film Journal) co-contributor C. Jerry Kutner posted his last entry in the (now) ongoing Nutty Professor debate out here in[…]
I’d like to join Tim Lucas and others in acknowledging the passing of Freddie Francis, a fine underrated director and one of the greatest of English cinematographers. He deservedly won[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
In a comment to my previous Jerry Lewis post, Tom Sutpen wrote: Couldn’t agree more . . . except . . . Jerry Lewis has always steadfastly denied any Martin[…]
In four films, two for Alfred Hitchcock (Rope {1948} and Strangers on a Train {1951}), one for Nicholas Ray (They Live by Night {1948}) and one for Luchino Visconti (Senso[…]
That Obscure Agent of Misanthropy? Un Chien Andalou (1929), the “surrealist masterpiece” made in collaboration with Salvador Dali was, in one sense, a new sugar-free version of Rene Clair’s original[…]
Actors & Personalities · Asian
“The women of To’s world are not just endearingly kooky, but often unacceptably bizarre and amoral in their excited reactions to events.” Five years ago, I was starting to think[…]
“Never mind that Hudson was a gay man playing a straight man playing a gay man in love with a man who was really a woman.” Universal Studio, never in[…]
Artists · Directors · Essays · Movies · Reviews
Beyond the queer readings of Strangers on a Train Men’s envy toward other men is a peculiarly anxiety-arousing topic and is rarely discussed, let alone openly admitted. Envy traditionally is deeply[…]
“Not only is it personal — it’s downright embarrassing.” Fourteen years in the making and spanning eighteen years, Caveh Zahedi’s I am a Sex Addict, despite a lukewarm reaction upon[…]
Artists · Directors · Movies · Reviews
Life with the restless ghost of Orson Welles’ last movie In 1970, after two decades of European exile broken only by his brief return in 1957-58 to make Touch of[…]
“Like every other skilled fabulist on earth there would forever be a part of Stroheim that truly believed his own fantasies.” 1. True Fake Nobleman Somewhere between his departure from[…]
“People are constantly falling back on their beds — but always in languor, never in passion . . .” It’s difficult not to be grateful to a film that introduces you to six or[…]
Artists · Directors · Movies · Reviews
“Who are you? Where do you come from?” Fabián Bielinsky’s sudden death last summer makes an unfortunate backstory to his two features, The Aura and Nine Queens, yet even this[…]
“As much as the landscape is a character in It Came From Outer Space, it dominates Antonioni’s L’Avventura . . .” The surprising affinities between the careers of Italian “art film” director Michelangelo[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
“Now, Goliath was a big man.” With the release of The Kid in 1921, Charlie Chaplin had fulfilled his dream of making a full-length comedy that would be recognized as[…]
What is the best way of placing a body? The opening scenes of The River (1997) are spent trying to make a body move and work in a realistic way. A film[…]
“Again the camera shows how the imperfection of Asa’s face does not present an insurmountable obstacle to her being ultimately attractive.” Within cinema scholarship there is a reluctance to address[…]
Actors & Personalities · Artists · Directors · Interviews · Movies
With additional comments by Catalina Sandino Moreno and Ethan Hawke Introduction The distributor’s website describes Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation, a dramatic feature based on Eric Schlosser’s best-selling book, as[…]
