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[…]
Category: Reviews
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[…]
Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey on DVD
The Criterion Collection offers another scrumptious golden-era DVD Criterion has spruced up the peerless 1936 Universal comedy My Man Godfrey and given it a bright new sheen. The digital transfer[…]
LGBT & Queer · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
Queer for the Rings: Frodo and Sam Find Fellowship
Pretty boys in danger: How yummy! Poor Frodo Baggins! He spends almost all his time in The Fellowship of the Ring 1) anticipating penetration; 2) suffering penetration; or 3) recovering[…]
Mastering Middle Earth: Fellowship of the Ring
Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien’s classic soars despite its flaws There’s a very obvious problem when transferring any book to the big screen, namely that some of us may already[…]
Asian · Essays · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Better Beauty Through Technology: Chinese Transnational Feminism and the Cinema of Suffering
Feminism adrift in a sea of ogling orientalism, global capitalism, and fatalist aesthetics INTRODUCTION Chinese Women’s Issues Under the Polar Aesthetics of Female Suffering and Mulan-ism Since the 1919 May[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Brigitte Bardot on DVD: Plucking the Daisy; The Night Heaven Fell; and . . . And God Created Woman Offer Vintage Titillation
“See that girl? Her ass is a song.” How horny were we back in the fifties? Horny enough to put on a raincoat, leave our happy suburban homes, drive downtown[…]
San Francisco’s Berlin and Beyond Festival 2002
Despite the American juggernaut, Germany and its neighbors continue to make good regional cinema So much of American culture, but particularly the movies, has been shaped over the decades by[…]
37th Chicago International Film Festival (2001)
“It’s so twenty-first century!” Was it coincidence that at least five festival films featured insistent cell-phone ringing onscreen, mocking transgressors in the audience? Actually, such acoustic violations were not a[…]
Reviews · Silents · Thrillers & Action
The Diabolical Dr. Mabuse on DVD: The Crimes of Dr. Mabuse; The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse; The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
Please pay attention to the madmen behind the curtain “You have no existence except as my tool. The individual has no being except insofar as he is part of a[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Fred Astaire Goes Solo in Damsel in Distress
Nice work if you can get it When Fred & Ginger went splitsville after Shall We Dance, Astaire decided that he didn’t really need a dame, an idea that tends[…]
Asian · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Beautiful Mystery and I Like You . . . I Like You Very Much on DVD
The DVDs of these two rare gay pink films could use some extras and better source prints, but at least they’re here! Sluggishly but steadily, one segment of once-inaccessible Asian[…]
Closely Watched Trains and The Shop on Main Street on DVD
Check out these two favorites from Czech cinema’s Age of Camelot Those who fondly remember grainy, popping, and cloudy prints of old foreign films will be happy to know that[…]
Return of the Repressed: The Resurgence of the French B-Movie
Despite the enduring lure of Gerard Depardieu in a frock coat, inventive French auteurs are reviving the low-budget genre. One of the key films of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc[…]
Directors · Essays · Producers & Studios · Reviews
The Dharma Blues: Or How I Brooded but Did Not Weep Over Kubrick’s Bomb
Opening the Eyes Wide Shut censorship battles for a close look A recent viewing of Eyes Wide Shut (1999) on HBO reminded me when, three summers ago, I had counted[…]
Dionysus in Georgia: Paradjanov on DVD: The Color of Pomegranates; The Legend of Suram Fortress; Ashik Kerib; Hagop Hoynatanian; Paradjanov: A Requiem
Three features, a documentary, and a rare short showcase the peculiar pleasures of the late Russian director “Surrealism,” “incitement to suicide,” and my favorite, “traffic in art objects leading to[…]
Mozart’s The Magic Flute on DVD
Ingmar Bergman does it again! Back in 1976, Ingmar Bergman made a movie of Mozart’s famous opera The Magic Flute.1 Twenty-five years later, it remains the finest operatic film ever[…]
We’ll Always Have Paris: Now that René Clair’s Le Million is on DVD
Not many extras but lots of fun What was Paris like back in the twenties? I mean, what was it really like? Well, if you cared for such things as[…]
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