Serpentine Evil and the Garden of Eden: On DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949)
Samson, meet Adam; Delilah, meet Eve
Category: Genres
Crime · Reviews · Writers & Critics
Critics Cornered: On Reviewers’ Reactions to David Ayres’ Street Kings
“Anyone who speaks unsanitized thought is going to lose.”
The Human Monster: On Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood
“There are no good and bad men; there are only damaged men … “
Historical & Epic · Writers & Critics
Bowling for America: Robert Warshow, There Will Be Blood, and the Topography of Desire
“The king-times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist. But the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it.”
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.”
Directors · Interviews · LGBT & Queer · Memoir
Man with a Movie Camera: Visiting Jonathan Caouette
“I could somehow control my own story.”
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[…]
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.”
Composers · Essays · Music & Musicals · Sound & Language · Writers & Critics
False Consonance and False Consciousness: Contrarian Notes on the Ideology of Film Music
“Defenseless against music, I must submit to its despotism and, depending on its whim, be god or garbage.”
Activist & Political · African American · Exploitation & Erotica · Genres
Hillbilly Hustle: The Thin Line Between Hillybilly Sexploitation and Blaxploitation in Trash Cinema
“How you gonna keep um’ down on the farm after they seen all this?”
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · War
Onward and Inward: On the 2007 Thessaloniki International Film Festival
“Each work limns a moral dilemma that has no discernible answer.”
The Double Standard: The Twins of Two-Faced Woman and Sylvia Scarlett
“She is both sentimental and shameless.”
Links + BSA
