Actors & Personalities · Books · Drama
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By Philip Gefter. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024. $42.00 * * * I love “making of”[…]
Drama · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
In this new reading of 2001, the monolith is used as a touchstone for considering a dozen tangents into iconoclastic cinema, the human and simian response to enigma, and the[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Horror
Hell is for angels. Only the mighty are fallen Only the sun-touched can plummet to these depths. – Lenore Kandel * * * Something drove producer Herman Cohen and his[…]
Biopic · Drama · Men & Masculinity · Military and Paramilitary
Words, and the internal fictions they represented, would never be enough to join Mishima’s corporeal self to the abstract notion of beauty except in a dreamlike capacity, which would not[…]
The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object . . . which we do not suspect.1 – Marcel Proust,[…]
Crime · Drama · Family · French Cinema · Linguistics and Language
Daniel is presented as a talented pianist, with an intellect of one well beyond his years. He is both strong-willed and sensitive. He is affectionate with his mother, yet culturally[…]
Asian · Drama · Experimental & Underground
The reflexive nature of Hong’s formalism, in which stylistic decisions call attention to themselves and point to the mediating presence of the man behind the camera, makes it problematic to[…]
Malick, in other words, is a director who established himself during the transition from Old Hollywood to New Hollywood, where experimenting became the norm, and it is while experimenting at[…]
Animation · Animators · New Genres · New Media
The film may appear gamer oriented, but general audiences should find it accessible and entertaining based on its fright factor alone. It’s simultaneously a boon to content-starved TF2 diehards and[…]
Activist & Political · Actors & Personalities · Communism and Socialism · Race · Women in Film
At every turn, Muir was disobedient, unconventional, and disruptive; she simply didn’t care what people thought. At no point did it occur to her that she should curb her activism,[…]
Animals · Documentaries · German Cinema · Nature
I will be writing about just what his meticulous and brilliant use of archival footage in these films does to the stories, and how there is a thread connecting them[…]
Drama · Historical & Epic · Holocaust
If the choking of the camp victims is muffled in the film, it is darkly recapitulated in the sputtering coughs that spread through the family, from Höss to Hedwig’s mother.[…]
Absurdism · Cityscapes · Drama · Literature and Film · Writers & Critics
Cosmopolis reflects the experience of a cancer patient, housed within a corporatized institution, dependent on the biases and whims of authorities, machines, and data. The book and film, poorly reviewed[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Essays · Romance
As with Monroe, his seemingly all-but-transparent method has proven remarkably difficult to emulate, much less duplicate. (Toles, 2003: 34) Whatever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type? That was[…]
Sunbeams, radiant and warm. Human bodies, young and old. And who are imprisoned here, our hearts are yet not cold. We who are imprisoned here, are wakeful as the stars[…]
Crime · Directors · Drama · Historical & Epic
The animal is the only genuine thing in man. – Frank Wedekind * * * A woman sits rhythmically rocking by candlelight, her eyes focused on a distant point. Around[…]
Crime · Drama · Historical & Epic · Indigenous · Native Americans
Killers interweaves the Western, film noir, the gangster film, the police procedural, the courtroom drama, and even a bit of horror; however, it jumps between them with often elliptical editing[…]
Artists · Directors · Indies · LGBT & Queer · Mondo Culture · UFOs
Filmmaker Ralph Coon speaks frankly to Tony Conn about his cult UFO documentary, the hidden side of Hollywood, and doing heroin with Adam Parfrey. * * * Ralph Coon might[…]
Books · Crime · Directors · Drama · Franchises & Series · War
Coppola not only lived for his films but also lived in and through them, in a constant process of inventing and reinventing himself both as an artist and as a[…]
Activist & Political · Comedy · Drama
It’s easy to mistake The Sweet East for a progressive indictment of modern America, with its gun-wielding conspiracy theorists and predatory authority figures – but they belie a blasé politics[…]
