Heavy Hitter in a Delicate Balance: The 48th New York Film Festival
Despite concessions to commerce, much to admire
Category: Movies
Movie Love: The First TCM Classic Film Festival
“Standing in line ahead of someone was enough to start such a friendship.”
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
UCLA Archive revisits “Cotton Comes to Harlem” and “Shaft”
The UCLA Film & Television Archive’s current series on black cinema of the 1970s has featured guest appearances by a number of actors and other people associated with films on[…]
Comic Side Duo Steps Up in The Social Network
There’s certainly various elements uniting in this confident film. Individually, they don’t seem like much, but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Just when Oliver Stone[…]
Dishonored
Dishonored Dir. Josef von Sternberg, 1931 Marlene Dietrich and Mata Hari: it sounds so obvious once you say it. It didn’t take long for Josef von Sternberg, to put the[…]
Stanley Kubrick’s Fear and Desire (1953)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKZhzpBl5g4] For years, Stanley Kubrick’s independently financed first feature, Fear and Desire, was a suppressed film, next-to-impossible to see. The man responsible for suppressing it was Kubrick himself, because he[…]
“In Northwest China, You’re on Your Own”: A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop
Cora: Yeah, but where are we headed? Frank: What’s the difference? Anywhere. –The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946 The key to the shifty enterprise of adapting a work like the[…]
The Late Claude Chabrol – Some Personal Favorites
There was something so damned likeable about Claude Chabrol (June 24,1930 – September 12, 2010). He had a remarkable enthusiasm for films and the process of filmmaking which translated into[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
“Machete doesn’t text.”
by RUTH STARKMAN This definitive statement comes from Machete, an ex-Federale played by veteran tough guy, Danny Trejo in the deliciously extreme action gore-fest Machete, which opens nationwide Friday, September[…]
Five Shameless Sci-Fi Oscar Robberies, Spearheaded By Avatar
Riding on the back of nine minutes of unseen footage, the special edition of James Cameron’s pioneering 3-D masterpiece Avatar returns to theaters today (Friday August 27). But billions of[…]
As Above, So Below – World on a Wire and The Thirteenth Floor
A MATRIX OF CONNECTIONS For a long time, I avoided watching The Thirteenth Floor (above) due to the name Roland Emmerich in the credits. Emmerich was responsible in one way[…]
Just Enough of Eat Pray Love
The first time I saw the memoir’s title, I couldn’t escape the association: the concept of “pray” following “eat” was made famous by the late quip-master, Rodney Dangerfield. The line[…]
Russia, Godard, Frankenstein – Era New Horizons 2010
I recently got back from a few days at the Era New Horizons Film Festival in Wrocaw. When I was there, most of the excitement centered on Xavier Beauvois’ Of[…]
The Real Villain of John Ford’s STAGECOACH (1939)
STAGECOACH (1939) directed by John Ford from a screenplay by Dudley Nichols is generally considered to be the first adult Western – adult in the sense that it took a set of archetypes[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
All-American Medea: The Radical Pleasures of Beyond the Forest
“Today’s Rosa Moline would treat her lack of sophistication as a resource and her isolation as a launching pad.”
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
History, Herstory, Our Story: The 2010 QDoc International Film Festival in Portland, Oregon
“She had a lot of action inside!”
Sanshiro Sugata: Kurosawa’s Elegy for the Reluctant Kamikaze
“Sanshiro is ultimately after spiritual gain — to achieve the purity he found in the moonlit flower.”
“The Story of a Guy Who Wants to Kill a Guy Who Wants to Die”: Claude Chabrol’s Bellamy
“The good news from Bellamy is that Depardieu gives one of his best performances in years.”
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Institute Benjamenta, There’s Always Tomorrow, Valley of the Bees, Everlasting Moments, Chicago, The Unpolished
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Atom Egoyan’s Chloe: Sex Cinema High and Low
“It is a protean film, and changes radically depending on how you approach it.”
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