New Directors / New Films 2010
The unpredictable, occasionally thrilling New Directors / New Films fest opens in New York City today. Locals are, of course, the immediate beneficiaries of this annual collaboration between the Film[…]
Category: Movies
Valentine’s Day: It Sucks Being a Woman
“Traditional gender roles seem to be in no danger of evolving.” Simone de Beauvoir laid it out in The Second Sex: “One is not born, but rather becomes a woman.” Indeed,[…]
Music & Musicals · Reviews · Uncategorized
The Runaways Get Bio-Picked
If the brief stardom of Buddy Holly and the even briefer star of Ritchie Valens should get the Hollywood biopic treatment, then why not the first all-girl balls-out rock act?[…]
Profondamente Italiano: Mid-August Lunch (Pranzo di Ferragosto)
If you want an idea of real Roman life, look no further than Mid-August Lunch (2008). Gianni (Gianni Di Gregorio, who directed, scripted and stars) and his 93-year-old mother Valeria[…]
Peter Graves – The Night of the Hunter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mi2Dusyg5A In a film career that spanned more than half a century, the late Peter Graves (1926-2010) was a dependable leading man, often at his best in non-leading roles, who[…]
Revanche (Criterion Collection)
Austrian filmmaker Götz Spielmann likes to capture rooms and the lives within. His camera remains stable or abruptly shifts, as if just discovering the element central to the layout. At[…]
Activist & Political · Festivals & Awards
Oscars II: On The Hurt Locker
As a tonic to all the hoopla surrounding The Hurt Locker and its Oscar win as Best Picture, we’re reprinting BL writer Jay Rothermel’s provocative review of the film, originally[…]
Oscars I: That Damn Helen Mirren!
I mean, DAME Helen Mirren. (Photo via Associated Press. Joke via Oscar co-host, Steve Martin.) Very happy for Kat B and The Hurt Locker. Worst Award of the Evening – The[…]
Charge of the White Elephant
What Jacksin’s doin’ with line and cullah goes beyond abstrackshin.
Photo Essays · Reviews · Silents
Victory (Maurice Tourneur, 1919)
More than 20 years before Jacques Tourneur took us to an exotic tropical isle in 1943’s I Walked With a Zombie, his father, producer/director Maurice Tourneur (1876-1961), blazed a similar trail with his[…]
Lists · Movies · Writers & Critics
Rating Movies: Or, Seeing Stars
“I want my favorites to get the high ratings — my judgments are being challenged by anonymous forces whom I cannot confront.”
Horror · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad: John Hillcoat’s The Road
“Hillcoat and his crew have taken the book’s hints and modeled their scavenging pair on contemporary images of homeless people, who already, as Hillcoat aptly puts it, are ‘living that apocalyptic world of day-to-day survival on the streets with no money and no food.'”
Activist & Political · Reviews
Looking Back on Silence and Condoleezza: The Weirdness of W
“The result is satire that doesn’t breathe.”
Deciphering the Indecipherable: Procedure as Art in Fincher’s Zodiac
“With Zodiac, obsession becomes the point of origin, the catalyst for artistic creation.”
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Blood, Monsoon Wedding, The Exiles, The General, Sunrise, 8-1/2, Death in the Garden
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Inimitable Charm: Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox
“Anderson, like Dahl, seems to have told a story to appeal to a child’s inner adult.”
Pinned on Both Sides: No Escape for Paul Muni’s Fugitive
“The film suggests the denial of the common worker, whose service to industry is only as worthy as his social status.”
“We’re Engaged to Be Engaged”: The Paranormal Activity of Trauma and Relationship
“The camera has a motor, you just turn it on and walk away” – Andy Warhol
Crime · Historical & Epic · Reviews
The Scent of a Woman: Perfect Misogyny in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
“The Grenouille of the film experiences an emotional epiphany that does not bring him humanity, but at least makes him yearn for its possibilities.”
Who are Parents? Parents are the ones who are ALWAYS there
I’ve written a lot about the decline of the “Father” in genre film–from tough WW2 vet to tough but loving 70s hedonist to needy, emasculated single dad of the 21st[…]
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