Where Do We Find Ourselves? John Cassavetes’ Faces Turns 40
“How can one be a maverickindependent filmmaker, and be an attentive,lovinghusband and father?”
Category: Movies
Like Wildroot Cream Oil, it makes your hair stand on end!
Between this heavy stuff floating around about NASA guy Edgar Mitchell and now today, Clark C. McClelland. (No link, because of weird interference, but google his name and take your[…]
3 Westerns I Watched This Weekend
GOOD – Western Union (Fritz Lang 1941) This is one of Lang’s first color films. He shot it in Arizona’s Painted Desert with special attention to the natural scenery, and[…]
America is Hard to See (Emile De Antonio; 1970)
Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 Presidential campaign started on a premise that would sound downright exotic coming from a member of the United States Senate today. He believed that US military agression[…]
The land beyond beyond….
I’ve yet to brave the crowds for Dark Knight, but I’m sufficiently death-obsessed of late to be fascinated by Heath Ledger’s “Joker from beyond the grave” and all the weird[…]
Summer Movie Essential: NIAGARA (1954)
A strangely soothing, a sun-drenched proto-neo-noir, NIAGARA is one of my favorite Marilyn Monroe movies, up there with DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK and THE MISFITS in its ability to capture[…]
FilmCrit and the Skidoo Epiphany
Over the weekend I read an essay on J.D. Salinger which Janet Malcom published in the New York Review of Books back in that now lost and fabled time, June[…]
Sunday Spiritus Cinemacticus: Fessing up to the Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
It may not be good, but it’s great. It’s great in that it’s gutsy way that no-holds-barred downers like REQUIEM FOR A DREAM and THEY SHOOT HORSES DON’T THEY are[…]
Terrible things to the human spirit
It’s shameful and it’s sad this en masse critical ass-whupping given to poor old M. Night Shyamalan over his second turkey in a row, THE HAPPENING (which would be a[…]
Asian · DVD & Blu-ray · Reviews
DVD of the Week: Come Drink With Me (1966)
It’s not the typical kung fu movie in that the action is not very well choreographed. I don’t think actress Cheng Pei-pei could do too many stunts. But director King[…]
Summer is a time for Aldrich, but keep Sister George away…
It’s been a few weeks since I laid eyes on it, but there’s something still making me a bit sick whenever I think of THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE. So[…]
The Human Monster: On Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood
“There are no good and bad men; there are only damaged men … “
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Berlin Alexanderplatz, Harry Langdon, Early Kurosawa, I Am Cuba, The Dragon Painter, Wrath of the Gods, Méliès
Berlin Alexanderplatz (Phil Jutzi, 1931) Franz Biberkopf must be one of the most porous characters in all literature. In Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz, a modernist torrent — dialogue,[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · Interviews
What’s Up, Docs? Nonstandard Operating Procedures in Recent Documentaries, and Interviews with Patricio Henriquez and Doug Pray
“Why didn’t you just stick to the truth?”
Directors · Festivals & Awards · Interviews
From a Line of Ancestors: Talking with Doris Dörrie and Natasha Arthy
“We in the West trample on them.”
Festivals & Awards · Writers & Critics
Twenty-One Years in the Midday Sun: Revisiting Roger Ebert’s Cannes
Here’s lookin’ at you, Roger
Dream Documents of Civil War: Three Films by Miklós Jancsó
“Jancsó’s controlled aesthetic acts as a dissonance that vibrates expressively with scenes of violence, torture, and shame.”
Plus Ça Change: The 2008 Rendez-vous with French Cinema
Gingerly moving out of the 20th century, not quite into the 21st
One Culture, Two Systems: The Rules of Spanglish and Twice Upon a Time
“When talking to others, what needs to be articulated?”
Crime · Reviews · Writers & Critics
Critics Cornered: On Reviewers’ Reactions to David Ayres’ Street Kings
“Anyone who speaks unsanitized thought is going to lose.”
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