Horror · Interviews · Movies · SF & Fantasy
* * * It’s The Day of the Triffids’ fault: when he was a wee lad stuck at home in front of the television with a sprained arm (fault: sister,[…]
Martyrdom suits Brown’s purpose, and it is in this extremism that he is ultimately un-American. His cause may be morally right but his attempt to impose it is not; the[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Drama · Essays · Romance
QT’s films are commonly hurtling toward darkness, yet Once Upon feels like a repudiation, as much as a culmination, of his oeuvre. There’s a point in the experience where the[…]
Huston, unlike Crane and his readers, had the actual experience of combat before him. What he discovered in Italy validated much of what Crane wrote. Huston, too, would attempt in[…]
This comparison shows Dark Victory to be conservative, and Now, Voyager to be liberal, on the question of how women can achieve lasting satisfaction. Of course, in Dark Victory one[…]
“. . . a jewel with facets of disease running all through it.” – Lester Bangs * * * It was once said that the real heroes of 18th-century writer[…]
As part of their liberation from convention, Corman empowers female characters with choices both real and metaphorical. Even a common love triangle can represent female empowerment, with the choice between[…]
Franchises & Series · Superheroes
This is all to say that Endgame is more interested in fantasy outcomes than solving the problems it gives itself. It promises us a future more bearable than our present[…]
Actors & Personalities · Hollywood
INTRODUCTION Jean Harlow (1911-1937), born Harlean Carpenter, rose to screen fame in the early 1930s playing characters with an unaffected, uninhibited, spontaneous sexuality. [See Figure 1.] Dubbed the “Platinum Blonde”[…]
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” – The Mystery Man in Lost Highway * * * David Lynch is not a horror director. With the possible exception of Eraserhead, his films[…]
But goes on being itself * * * True Love in cinema is more than fine acting, well-written scripts, or even directorial tone. Not that IMDb cast and crew should[…]
What interests me (and I suspect, Assayas) is not so much the substance of these dinner table debates, which tend to move in predictable repeating circles, as their texture. People[…]
The movie’s reviews were mixed, and it failed to make a profit in the summer of 1975. . . . but Night Moves has gone on to be recognised as[…]
Drama · Music & Musicals · War
Suddenly jazz became a major taboo in Soviet society until Stalin’s death. In Western Europe, by contrast, mainly in Paris, jazz took off after the Nazis’ defeat in the hues[…]
Actors & Personalities · Commentary · Silents
Those who affect a superior attitude toward a great artist such as Lillian Gish are not only ignorant of our cultural heritage but stubbornly unaware that art usually comes from[…]
Why hasn’t there been a biopic of John DeLorean, whose life, as his son Zachary says in the documentary Framing John DeLorean, has all the elements for a rip-snorter: “It’s[…]
“Lucky Grandma,” says Claire Baiz in her fifth Tribeca dispatch, “features richly layered characters in director Sasie Sealy’s homage to Chinatown that make this universal tale both reassuring and groundbreaking.”[…]
In her fourth report from the Tribeca Film Festival, Claire Baiz looks at first-time feature director Matt Ratner’s intriguing family drama Standing Up, Falling Down, which, as a thoughtful film[…]
African American · Documentaries · Sports
Muhammad Ali was one of the great cultural figures of the 20th century, and of course, one of its most brilliant and inspiring sports figures, equally adept in the ring[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries
Herewith (we love that word) is our second dispatch from the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, brought to you by our correspondent Claire Baiz, who will be filing dispatches on some[…]
