Essays · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Parker’s “ode to bathroom humor” plumbs surprising depths Contemporary American comedy evades realistic treatment of social issues, opting instead for escape from these issues. That the bulk of racial representation[…]
“There she is, in all her beads and ribbons!” How Manhattan is Nothing Sacred? To be more Manhattan, it would have to be Manhattan. Because once more we’re on that[…]
In which Harryhausen’s most poignant monster mixes it up After pioneering French filmmaker Georges Mêlies, there are few special effects icons left to trip over on your way to current[…]
Documentaries · Noir · Reviews
In DVD land, the world’s your oyster – pearls included (sometimes) Cuban Story (Victor Pahlen, 1959) By the mid-1950s, Errol Flynn was enjoying the low high life of a bloated[…]
Sure Arthur Miller’s masterpiece is flawed, but so’s your mother On paper, Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s 1949 Pulitzer Prize winner, shouldn’t work. Miller intended the play as another[…]
Ida Lupino: Mother of Us All! “Any rocks up there to give you a problem, darlin’? Now, Walter baby, while we’re here we might as well take the posse through.[…]
Girlflesh ‘n boyflesh ‘n apocalypse [Warning: Spoilers!] It’s hard to keep your thinking cap on when you’re watching Teenage Caveman, directed by the notorious Larry Clark, the famed photographer/director whose[…]
Why Tobey Maguire has us by the testicles and why he isn’t going to let go Whence Spider-Man? Whence, indeed, and whither? It has come to pass in these United[…]
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[…]
Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
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[…]
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 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[…]
(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[…]
African American · Music & Musicals · Reviews
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[…]
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.[…]
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,[…]
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
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[…]
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 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[…]
