Recalling the Dream of Parenthood in Raising Arizona
Of babynappings and bodily fluids, Coens and Kubricks In Raising Arizona (1987), a blatantly obscure graffiti can be seen in the lavatory wall behind escaped convicts, Hale and Evelle (John[…]
Category: Movies
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Diamonds in the Toilet: Andy Warhol’s The Chelsea Girls
Warhol’s timeless, trashy “girls” come a-callin’ More talked about than seen since its debut, The Chelsea Girls, Andy Warhol’s infamous double-projected dive into a demimonde he created, is getting a[…]
At last, a Cool British Film: 24 Hour Party People
Dogme meets the Manchester music scene in this well-wrought biopic British cinema has moved on in the last decade – its heritage dramas now tend to have a modernistic twist,[…]
Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
The Revolution Starts with Glitter! David Weissman and Bill Weber’s Documentary The Cockettes
The legendary campsters of the counterculture take a bow in this diverting documentary The Cockettes – fondly, if sometimes barely remembered as curios in the camp canon – are reborn[…]
Titanic Lovers, or How a Good Girl Pleased Her Man
(Which in this case may be better than getting him) The Titanic did not sink; it only seemed that way at the time. She has proven as unsinkable as one[…]
Keeping It Real: Documentaries in the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, 2002
Dykes and trannies get more than their usual screen time this year, thank goddess Documentaries are the heart of the Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, not only because they’re often[…]
The 20th Bergamo Film Meeting: March 9-17, 2002
This fine Italian festival features wide variety, no polemics When Sandro Zambetti initiated this modest festival in 1982, he aimed to “make a difference at a practical level.” Invoking no[…]
The Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival: February 2002
An engaging mix of cinema – two-thirds of it Canadian – visits the Great White North’s “postcard village on steroids” The Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival, now in its[…]
The Belfort International Film Festival: France 2001
Identity politics, urban terror, and Bulle Ogier distinguish this festival from some of its more pretentious peers When you think French film festival, you automatically think Cannes or even Deauville.[…]
African American · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Reggae Heaven: Rockers (1978) on DVD
It’s the culture, stupid. One of the best sequences found in Theodore Bafaloukos’ meditation on Rastafarian culture known as Rockers comes when the motley crew of world-class musicians that litter[…]
Why Won’t You Love Me? Richard Glatzer’s The Fluffer
Sean, meet Johnny Rebel’s cock. Johnny Rebel’s cock, meet Sean. Fluffing, like that other impolite f-word felching, was once an obscure term, the exclusive province of pornhounds and industry insiders.[…]
Undoing Oedipus: Feminism and Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher
Feminist or misogynist? A psychoanalytic reading of this controversial film offers some clues. If Michael Haneke’s new film The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste) ever makes it to the English-speaking world,[…]
Alienation and Perversion: Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher
Is the film reinforcing or exploding stereotypes about female sexuality, or both? Michael Haneke’s latest film uses Vienna as its backdrop. Amongst its other high-cultural connections, Vienna is closely associated[…]
Experimental & Underground · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
It’s Alive! Jan Svankmajer’s Little Otik (Otesánek)
If only “little” Otik had stayed that way! Despite its tortured history, Eastern Europe, but particularly Czechoslovakia, has managed to produce an almost uninterrupted flow of the world’s great animation[…]
Todd Field’s In the Bedroom: Wake me when it’s over!
More boring than real life, plus you have to pay to get in Perhaps there’s something in the water. Whatever the cause, whenever an American film director takes on a[…]
The Burden of Dreams: Gianni Amelio’s The Way We Laughed
The rise and fall of two brothers in postwar Italy The winner of Venice’s Golden Lion, The Way We Laughed is the regret-filled story of two Sicilian brothers in Turin[…]
Fred and Ginger: Together Again, yet Not Quite Carefree
“Colorblind,” and maybe just a little bit tone-deaf Breaking up is hard to do. But getting back together, well, that’s even harder. After the semi-failure of Shall We Dance in[…]
Asian · Essays · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
The Japanese Pink Film: Tandem, The Bedroom, and The Dream of Garuda on DVD
All jargon and no authenticity? Of the vast numbers of corporate-made genre films that flooded Japanin the 1970s, Donald Richie once remarked that the “West knows nothing of these pictures,[…]
Activist & Political · Reviews
The Clinton Syndrome, or the Survival Legacy: Wag the Dog
Revisiting the failure of Wag the Dog and other, more troubling failures “And the public, by and large, seems willing to live with the fact that the most powerful man in the[…]
Luis Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire on DVD
The longest episode of foreplay in cinema history? Pierre Louys’ novel The Woman and the Puppet, first published in 1898, has been a popular source for cinema, with at least[…]
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