Composers · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Show us the way to the next pretty boy Don’t know much about history? Well, don’t sweat it, because Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht didn’t either when they decided to[…]
“We’ve agreed to be part of a collective perception … To become a crowd is to keep out death. To break off from the crowd is to risk death as[…]
“The ‘key’ to the ‘chamber’ of immortality looks like a glowing white penis” Contrary to the title of this review, anyone who knows the prolific output – 92 B-movies since[…]
They spit! They swear! They smoke in bed! Back in 1933, The Bowery scored a big hit, introducing Darryl Zanuck’s new independent venture called Twentieth Century Pictures, yet this nostalgic[…]
Cinema meets the sweet science at the multiplex, and nobody gets knocked out After a long hot summer of mismatches in 2002, we finally got to see a competitive heavyweight[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Reviews
This documentary offers an affectionate, in-depth portrait of the enduring world leader who stood up to the U.S. Over the course of the last 40 years, the CIA has tried[…]
It’s little wonder this yawner didn’t get a theatrical release Gaudi Afternoon, a 2001 San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival entry, never got a theatrical distributor and has[…]
A landmark work in the queer canon arrives on DVD Basil Dearden’s excellent thriller Victim was released in 1961, during roughly the same time as the ascension of Britain’s “angry[…]
“Into the 21st century, son. This is how wars are gonna be fought and life is gonna be lived.” 1967 was a fascinating year for thrillers. John Boorman sent Lee[…]
Animation · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Wooden bottom boyz, teensy teens, and a Satanic blackface Charlie McCarthy – these are just a few of the offerings from le cinema puppet! Pinocchio Walt Disney made horror movies[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
New DVD also includes Ezio Pinza, Lena Horne, and Duke Ellington “The worst picture I ever worked on.” That was Fred Astaire’s overly sour take on Second Chorus. It’s easy[…]
These brothers may be a little too close “Viscontiesque” doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, and hasn’t entered the language as “Felliniesque” has. But Visconti’s movies are at least as[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Interviews · Visual Artists
“I have been making art for 50 years and have never allowed myself to be corrupted. Quite the opposite, I was locked up.” – Otto Mühl As I tremulously reflect[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
If you think his films are bad, wait till you see his life Among its many pleasures, the sixties opened the floodgates for cinematic sleaze. Subjects hitherto found only in[…]
Criterion serves up two more deep-dish DVDs from yesteryear Sullivan’s Travels (1941) Hollywood’s self-exams are usually dipped in acid: What Price Hollywood?, A Star is Born, Sunset Boulevard, The Bad[…]
The creator of Princess Mononoke brings his sleek Boschian vision to America, courtesy of Disney “Being enclosed, protected, and kept away from dangers, children cannot help but enlarge their fragile[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Who is that comely, vicious gal plotting mayhem from the shadows? Why, the dyke of 1960s pop culture, of course. “Lesbians have their variations from one group to another. There[…]
Essays · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
A close reading points to the latter. For those who see popular film as capable of providing more than cheap visceral thrills, the dismal nature of recent writing on Attack[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
The semi-sweet smell of excess Have you got a yen for understated elegance and class? Then keep on truckin’, dude, because this 1940 M-G-M black-and-white monster/masterpiece ain’t for you. M-G-M[…]
Activist & Political · Reviews
Cutting-edge films continue to be cut – or suppressed entirely – by India’s clueless Censor Board “Censorship is when a work of art expressing an idea which does not fall[…]
