Buried Alive: François Ozon’s Under the Sand (2000)
A French angst-fest mostly redeemed by Charlotte Rampling’s nuanced portrait of a woman unhinged François Ozon’s latest film will come as a bit of a shock to seasoned Ozon watchers,[…]
Category: Genres
Asian · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Art Film Hidden Inside the Chop-Socky Flick
Ang Lee: third-wave feminist? The reviews of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon have been positive – but the critics, somehow, seem more impressed by the trimmings than the turkey.[…]
Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
The Girls Can’t Help It: Baise-Moi (2000)
Feminist screed or fetish-screwfest? Flip a coin Female revenge films aren’t exactly an unknown quantity, especially in the exploitation circuit. Pam Grier was one of the genre’s superstars in the[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Sweet Movies: Four by Dusan Makavejev: Man Is Not a Bird; WR: Mysteries of the Organism; Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator; Innocence Unprotected
Free-associating with a master of free cinema “Free cinema” has the dull ring of an oxymoron. The extreme level of control required and the mass of pressures that collide in[…]
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Feedback from the Global Village: Culture Docs
From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China offers three documentaries for the price of one; Genghis Blues is too shaggy for words The collapse of Cold War rigidities and[…]
“Hand Me That 14-Inch Willy!” The Puppet Artistry of Barry Purves
This brilliant Brit’s sleight-of-hand breathes life into wood and wire At a symposium on puppet animation in Seattle a few years ago, Barry Purves, an alumnus of the Aardman Studios[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Poverty Row, Wardour Street: The Last Years of British Exploitation Cinema
This golden age is more like fool’s gold, but it has its thrills Even as a Brit, when I think of exploitation cinema, I tend to think of Roger Corman,[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · Reviews
San Francisco’s 2001 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival
Celebrating activism and exposing some of the more chaotic corners of world politics Despite an avalanche of news and quasi-news programs, tabloid yakfests, and crudities like Cops, Survivor, and the[…]
Asian · Directors · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Blood Spear, Mt. Fuji: Uchida Tomu’s Conflicted Comeback from Manchuria (1955)
Resurrection and renewal in postwar Japanese cinema, as seen through Tomu’s 1955 masterpiece Following Japan’s surrender in World War II, the colonial tables were turned. The Chinese took control of[…]
Shaddup! The 2001 San Francisco Silent Film Festival
All’s quiet on the cinematic front in this seductive survey of the artful ’20s Superman had his Fortress of Solitude; San Francisco has its Silent Film Festival. This annual event,[…]
The 2001 San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival
Gangbangers, sex robots, and babydykes, oh my! Now in its 19th year, the San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) has become an increasingly plush and rather important venue for[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Something to Come Out To: Gay Documentaries Triumph in the 2001 SFILGFF
A bumper crop of docs scale the heights and trawl the depths of queer culture “There was nothing to come out to. We never heard the word homosexual. The media[…]
Documentaries · Exploitation & Erotica
Cass Paley’s Wadd: The Life and Times of John Holmes (1999)
Livin’ large with the Hung One Porn has had its share of superstars, but none were bigger – in every sense – than John Holmes. This “little boy with a[…]
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Don McGlynn’s Louis Prima: The Wildest! (1999): A Documentary
The illustrious history of the king of the hepcats (and the queen of deadpan) Louis Prima and his wife Keely Smith were a staple of ’50s and ’60s variety TV,[…]
Life Is Shit – Let’s Put on a Show! Stephen Sondheim’s Company on DVD
“I guess it all works if you revere Stephen Sondheim.” Have you been kicking yourself ever since May 3, 1970, when you weren’t there for the marathon recording session that[…]
Mother Russia! Josef von Sternberg’s Scarlet Empress on Criterion DVD
“Some of the mise-en-scene has a suffocating beauty, as in the bravura marriage sequence where the screen is clogged to the breaking point with images – a strategy that shows[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Fred and Ginger Savor La Belle Romance in Swing Time
“Shall we take it straight through?” Swing Time is the last Fred & Ginger musical to have it all – lots of great songs from Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields,[…]
Asian · Historical & Epic · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Gohatto, or, the End of Oshima Nagisa?
Truly subversive or mere cinematic “seasoning,” in the director’s own phrase? I am the first to admit that Oshima Nagisa’s Gohatto (1999, more literally “Against the Law,” but titillatingly translated[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
Private Eye: Avant Garde Filmmaker Abigail Child in Brief
Abigail Child’s compulsive visual collages are visual and aural legerdemain Since the 1970s, experimental filmmaker and poet Abigail Child has been engaged in a kind of cultural archaeology. Unearthing found[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · Reviews
Yugoslavia in Focus: Observations from the 3rd Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival (2001)
Archival footage, dramatizations, and dark satire capture the dire end-of-century events in the former Yugoslavia Film after film bombards the eye with images of destruction: buildings split open, their wire[…]
Links + BSA
