African American · Directors · Interviews
A Quiet Storm: Charles Burnett on Namibia and His Post-Killer of Sheep Career
“Each film requires for me its own approach.”
Category: Genres
Directors · Interviews · LGBT & Queer · Memoir
Man with a Movie Camera: Visiting Jonathan Caouette
“I could somehow control my own story.”
Directors · Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · Interviews
What’s Up, Docs? Nonstandard Operating Procedures in Recent Documentaries, and Interviews with Patricio Henriquez and Doug Pray
“Why didn’t you just stick to the truth?”
Gothic Eurowesterns: A Grotesque Perspective on a Hollywood Myth
On the manifest destiny of Civil War tricksters and gun-slinging corpses
Dream Documents of Civil War: Three Films by Miklós Jancsó
“Jancsó’s controlled aesthetic acts as a dissonance that vibrates expressively with scenes of violence, torture, and shame.”
Who Do You Love? Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game Reconsidered
Was Le Grande Jean too soft on the aristos?
Serpentine Evil and the Garden of Eden: On DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949)
Samson, meet Adam; Delilah, meet Eve
Crime · Reviews · Writers & Critics
Critics Cornered: On Reviewers’ Reactions to David Ayres’ Street Kings
“Anyone who speaks unsanitized thought is going to lose.”
Actors & Personalities · Pre-Code
Miriam Hopkins & the Pre-Code Menage-a-trois
Imagine Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston deciding to live together and share Brad Pitt! How hot would that be? But no, now we live in a much more (as in[…]
The Double Standard: The Twins of Two-Faced Woman and Sylvia Scarlett
“She is both sentimental and shameless.”
Stunted Lives: On 4 Months, 3 Weeks, & 2 Days
Unsettling and unmissable
Downward Mobility: On Roger Corman’s Bloody Mama
“You never could make a decent living … you never did mount me proper.”
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
The Foxy, the Dead, and the Foxier: Re-Visiting Death Proof
“He’s old enough to be my dad!”
Thank God for Uncle Tom: Race and Religion Collide in The Green Pastures
A kinder, gentler condescension
Documentaries · Religion & Spirituality
Innocence Lost or Regained? The Clear-Eyed Vision of Jesus Camp
“Real things happening to real people”
When Virtue Sleeps: The Moral World of Denys Arcand’s L’Âge des Ténèbres
“We are asked to think morally: is the happiness these characters seek possible or desirable?”
Actors & Personalities · Essays · SF & Fantasy
A Boy and His Dog: On Will Smith, Apocalypse, and I Am Legend
“Neville remains wholly oblivious, falling into each trap the ferals set … “
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Ode to Lili: And Leslie Caron
“This MGM movie is studio-system filmmaking at its most protective, and it’s designed entirely to showcase Leslie Caron …”
Directors · Experimental & Underground
Peter Watkins and the Politics of Expression: On Edvard Munch (1974) and The Freethinker (1994)
“Watkins’ filmmaking bravely seeks an insistence on personal truth his own and the viewer’s.”
Links + BSA
