Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Fred dies, Ginger cries The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle is the not very graceful swan song of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals of the thirties.1 Carefree,[…]
Two of the most elusive auteurs tell all, or at least some. ROBERT BRESSON: WITHOUT A TRACE A documentary about Robert Bresson (1901?-1999), with the director cooperating – indeed, appearing[…]
Ida Lupino: Mother of Us All! “Any rocks up there to give you a problem, darlin’? Now, Walter baby, while we’re here we might as well take the posse through.[…]
Girlflesh ‘n boyflesh ‘n apocalypse [Warning: Spoilers!] It’s hard to keep your thinking cap on when you’re watching Teenage Caveman, directed by the notorious Larry Clark, the famed photographer/director whose[…]
Why Tobey Maguire has us by the testicles and why he isn’t going to let go Whence Spider-Man? Whence, indeed, and whither? It has come to pass in these United[…]
Of babynappings and bodily fluids, Coens and Kubricks In Raising Arizona (1987), a blatantly obscure graffiti can be seen in the lavatory wall behind escaped convicts, Hale and Evelle (John[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Warhol’s timeless, trashy “girls” come a-callin’ More talked about than seen since its debut, The Chelsea Girls, Andy Warhol’s infamous double-projected dive into a demimonde he created, is getting a[…]
Dogme meets the Manchester music scene in this well-wrought biopic British cinema has moved on in the last decade – its heritage dramas now tend to have a modernistic twist,[…]
Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
The legendary campsters of the counterculture take a bow in this diverting documentary The Cockettes – fondly, if sometimes barely remembered as curios in the camp canon – are reborn[…]
Music & Musicals · TV & Streaming
There was a time, America, a time when public television consisted of more than Antiques Roadshow, women in pantsuits explaining how to feel good about yourself, and reruns of inane[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Silents
“Why are they all ugly little men?” asked Cindy, after I’d dragged her to three solid weeks of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, and Harold Lloyd at a silent[…]
“While the first Superman film, directed by Richard Donner (on which Lester served as an uncredited producer), is essentially reverential and respectful towards the subject, Lester’s attitude in his second[…]
African American · Music & Musicals · Reviews
It’s the culture, stupid. One of the best sequences found in Theodore Bafaloukos’ meditation on Rastafarian culture known as Rockers comes when the motley crew of world-class musicians that litter[…]
Sean, meet Johnny Rebel’s cock. Johnny Rebel’s cock, meet Sean. Fluffing, like that other impolite f-word felching, was once an obscure term, the exclusive province of pornhounds and industry insiders.[…]
Experimental & Underground · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
If only “little” Otik had stayed that way! Despite its tortured history, Eastern Europe, but particularly Czechoslovakia, has managed to produce an almost uninterrupted flow of the world’s great animation[…]
“Colorblind,” and maybe just a little bit tone-deaf Breaking up is hard to do. But getting back together, well, that’s even harder. After the semi-failure of Shall We Dance in[…]
Activist & Political · LGBT & Queer
Don’t ask, don’t tell, but do watch “If they took all the gays and lesbians out of the military there wouldn’t be enough people left to defend Rhode Island!” —[…]
Asian · Essays · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
All jargon and no authenticity? Of the vast numbers of corporate-made genre films that flooded Japanin the 1970s, Donald Richie once remarked that the “West knows nothing of these pictures,[…]
Activist & Political · Reviews
Revisiting the failure of Wag the Dog and other, more troubling failures “And the public, by and large, seems willing to live with the fact that the most powerful man in the[…]
African American · Directors · Producers & Studios
For many black auteurs seeking distribution, working around the system has proven as rewarding – and necessary – as working within it Since the popularity and commercial success of films[…]
