Austria Hungry: The Return of a Film Nation
Vienna’s Forgotten Influence and New Austrian Film Two unrelated events signaled a kind of poetic caesura in Austrian cinema at its second turn of the century: Austria’s first film star,[…]
Unadaptable: A Fatal Problem with The Human Stain
“Why not sock the audiences early with the ‘fuck her in the ass’ line?” I do not look forward to any book I am reading being turned into a novel.1[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Silents
Blossom in the Dust: Lillian Gish, The Wind, and Mr. Griffith
“I was never young, and if you were never young, how can you ever feel old?” Towards the end of Follow Me, Boys! (1966), a particularly obnoxious piece of Walt[…]
Babies Bubbling Up: David O Russell’s Fertile Perversity Filigrees Flirting with Disaster
“There’s always been an acute mystery attached to the body . . .” Since Flirting with Disaster starts with Patricia Arquette lying in bed for two minutes, we think we[…]
Tentacles No Knives Can Cut: Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale
All in the family, unfortunately Home is the place where, when you have to go there They have to take you in.” “They fuck you up, your mum and dad,[…]
The Last Cockroach: The De- and Rehumanizing of Culture in Cinema
Reasons to be evil An eclectic taste in films can have odd results. Having seen, within days of each other, Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, 2004), and The Wraith (Mike Marvin,[…]
Spirit in the Dark: Barbara Kopple on Filming the Group That Wouldn’t Shut Up & Sing
“Just put your sneakers on and go. Go on the journey.” New York native Barbara Kopple has been a vital and socially progressive voice in documentary filmmaking for the past[…]
On Manderlay: This time “liberal” is a dirty word
“The movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society . . . America must be born again!” — Martin Luther King Jr. 1967 “Dear[…]
SF & Fantasy · Visual Artists · Writers & Critics
Expanding the Possibilities: Peter Chung Talks About Aeon Flux, Matriculated, Dark Fury, and More
“The more you’re able to project your own world upon the work, the more power it has.” Peter Chung is not your average sci-fi figure. First, he cuts a studied[…]
We’re Just Taller Children: On the Dardennes’ L’Enfant
The Belgian humanists’ most Bressonian film to date With Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s latest film, L’Enfant (The Child, 2005), we are on familiar territory: the setting of the brother-directors’ hometown[…]
Buried Alive: On Frederick Wiseman’s Juvenile Court
“The great legal scholar Lenny Bruce once observed that in the halls of justice the only justice is in the halls . . .” The long, astonishing final sequence of[…]
Wim, We Hardly Know Ye: On Wenders’ Don’t Come Knocking
The bad news is . . . there’s not much good news If you’ve despaired at the Wim Wenders of recent years — that long line, since 1987’s Wings of[…]
Anthropomorphizing the Anthropoid: Peter Jackson’s King Kong
Even a big ape can enjoy a sunset, can’t he? 1st Blonde: “What is this thing, anyway?” 2nd Blonde: “Some kind of gorilla.” 1st Blonde: “Ain’t we got enough of[…]
Looking for Angst in All the Wrong Places: Sam Mendes’s Jarhead: Marines Gone Wild!
A few really cute boys take their shirts off, but that’s about it On paper, it must have sounded, well, interesting. Take the flamboyant, left-wing lyricism of Academy Award-winning director[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews · Silents
Step Right Up and Call Me Speedy! Harold Lloyd — Almost All Isn’t Enough
The last of the great silent clowns now on DVD “Step Right Up and Call Me Speedy!” Harold Lloyd has often — too often, really — been called the Anthony[…]
Reviews · TV & Streaming · Writers & Critics
Nine Hamlets: Olivier, Burton, Jacobi, Kline, Gibson, Branagh, Scott, Hawke, and Lester All Take a Stab at the Original Man in Black
“Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?” Hamlet, it must be said, is not[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Quickies: Random Short Reviews from 119 Bullets + 3 to Transgeneration
“Dafydd Thomas (Lucas), a delusional queen in PVC fetish drag, jealously guards his status as ‘the only gay in the village’ even when competing queens arrive to challenge him.” 119[…]
Grandma’s Boy: No, Not That One
Linda Cardellini dies and goes to Hell I’m no Dante, but I bet they’re busy in Hell these days. Busy putting in new and lower circles, busy putting in new[…]
Toto, I Don’t Think We’re in the Grand Tetons Anymore: Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain
Queens in jeans? Bareback Mountain? Buttfuck Mountain? Steers n’ Queers? Homos on the Range? Has there ever been a movie that invited more witticisms?1 In fact, Brokeback should be called[…]
Against Pleasure, Against Identification: Feminism, Cultural Atheism, and the Tragic Subject (Part Two)
“The more a man dreams, the less he believes.” ~ H. L. Mencken Preface: Why My Dreams Smell Like Nothing (Onto the Regime of Odor) On June 18, 2005 (I[…]
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