A Sequel Too Far: The Case of the Multiplying Movie
“A Hollywood Satan is a persistent devil” There is a simple, plain logic to sequels. Capitalize on the prodigious success of the original movie. Sometimes the box office success of[…]
Aural Drag: This Is What It Sounds Like, When Men Cry
Bwaaaaah! There’s a whole new wave of sensitive guy films emerging in the last few years, a wave that finally begins to recede (hopefully) with the stunning failure of Cameron[…]
French & American Beauty: Mid-20th-Century Vistas from Tati to Scorsese
Par avion ad astra * * * If the 1940s was a golden age, most of us born then would probably admit to having blinked and missed it. On the[…]
Men in Love: On Brokeback Mountain
” … I wanted eternal union with a man too: another kind of love,” he said. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “It’s an obscenity, a theory, a perversity.” “Well[…]
Proust Regained: On Raul Ruiz’s Time Regained and Filming the Unfilmable
“In a single bold stroke, Ruiz films the novel according to the play of images, feelings, scents, and tastes that Marcel experiences.” 1. An attempt to film Proust’s Remembrance of[…]
A History of Violence: A Minimum of Thought
“A whole load of ‘Aw’ with not a lot of ‘shucks,’ updated only by a little cunnilingus.” If David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence were an actor, it would be[…]
Auteur in Distress: On Wallace Beery, von Sternberg, and Sergeant Madden
Cinema’s supreme pictorialist surrenders to “the cop on the beat” Wallace Beery was always a strange case. An outstanding character actor throughout the silent era and the early sound period,[…]
What the Sound Is Saying: How Music Moves in Bertolucci
“Who doesn’t want to be rescued by their narrator?” Sometimes a film’s camera takes you on one track, while its music sends you on another, wider one: it offers you[…]
Everyone Has Something to Hide: On Cronenberg’s A History of Violence
Unmasking (the) America(n) Two of the largest influences on postwar American life were the virtual invention of the teenager and self-help. Something for nothing underlies the idea behind each development.[…]
Ann-Margret in Wonderland: But Bates and the Brits Are at Home in The Return of the Soldier
“Her English accent wanders around her mouth like a playful ice cube.” Have pity on The Return of the Soldier. Shot in England in 1982, the film did not get[…]
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[…]
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