Provocative and visionary! The MadCat Women’s International Film Festival is based in San Francisco, but one hesitates to call it a “San Francisco festival.” Programmed for the past ten years (this September[…]
Artists · Directors · Interviews · Movies · Reviews
“I do not have the serenity of women. But I admire it.” Pedro Almodovar’s new film Volver (Return) features an unusual number of deaths. Penelope Cruz, in the best performance[…]
If you must see only one Truman Capote movie in your life, let it be this one Do I really want to see a movie about Truman Capote leaving Manhattan[…]
Scorsese gets all Irish on our asses, and it works I admit it. I thought Marty had lost it. I thought he had gone all lazy and cute and Hollywood,[…]
Documentaries · Genres · Movies · Reviews
“Every smallest branch of the human family at one time or another has carved its dreams out of the rock on which it has lived.” – Alan Lomax It was a remarkable[…]
“There are things you shouldn’t sell” For the festival’s 42nd annual opening night, the 3,000-seat Chicago Theatre threw open its doors and watched the convergence on the red carpet as[…]
“I expect to be erect any time now.” “An eighth-grader’s mind trapped in an eighth-grader’s body.” That’s how one critic summed up Aaron Spelling. Aaron had him killed, of course.[…]
When Jack Palance’s Lieutenant Joe Costa suddenly returns from what seemed a certain death in Robert Aldrich’s Attack (1956) – his left arm hanging lifeless, rendered to ground beef by[…]
While the rest of the blogosphere is celebrating director Robert Aldrich, I thought I’d put in a word for one of my favorite – and least discussed – Aldrich films,[…]
Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai (1948) is one of the most anti-noir of classic noirs. “Shanghai” in The Lady From Shanghai means the same thing as “Chinatown” in[…]
I admit it. I thought Marty had lost it. I thought he had gone all lazy and cute and Hollywood, with no fire in the belly. And for the first[…]
Takashi Miike’s Imprint is being advertised on its DVD box cover as “Banned From Cable Broadcast.” Although other episodes (notably, Dario Argento’s Jenifer) were partly censored, of the 13 one-hour[…]
RECOMMENDED READING: In the September/October 2006 issue of Film Comment, writer/director Paul Schrader’s article on, “The Film Canon – What Constitutes a Cinematic Masterpiece.” This lengthy, absorbing essay has something[…]
Not since Amélie stuck raspberries on all ten fingers has such whimsy wafted off the screen, though Michel Gondry’s hero in the wistful yet delightfully goofy The Science of[…]
A while back, I talked about the re-emergence of Romantic “blue flower” imagery in films like Batman Begins and A Scanner Darkly. Add one more film to the list –[…]
Hollywoodland is hardly the first film to feature a brace of matinee idols who smirk with all the confidence of the well-paid (consult most buddy movies starting with Butch Cassidy[…]
A quartet of recent Korean films shows a reassuringly robust national cinema Over the last six years, the New York Asian Film Festival has done a great service to Asian[…]
“Turn towards me. I’ll make do with your heart beating next to mine.” Cycles of Porn: Sex/Life in L.A. Part 2 (Jochen Hick, 2005) Fans of the gay porn documentary[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
“Speaking of impurity: what was Rita Hayworth’s image supposed to be in the ’40s?” What did we use to think of other countries? The question occurred to me while watching[…]
