How Sweet to Be a Cloud? Fancy and Fucking Collide in Tsai-Ming Liang’s Latest
Tsai pushes the art/porn envelope — or does he? With The Wayward Cloud (Tian Bian Yi Duo Yun — literally “A Cloud at the Edge of the Sky,” 2004), Tsai[…]
Les Fleurs du Mal: The Leopard Man and Le Corbeau: Tourneur and Clouzot Deliver Homefront Perversity, Paranoia, and Subversion
“Nothing is so transient as sanity and safety . . .” Free from his past and sufficiently angry to wage war, Germain enlists Vorzet’s talents as psychiatrist — he believes[…]
In a Galaxy Far, Far Away — But Not Far Enough: Joss Whedon’s Serenity: Like TV, but Without All the Intelligence
Sayin’ ain’t doin’, motherfucker! It’s a damn fact that starin’ into the inky, pitchy blackness of space can make you a bit addle-pated, to the point that you might start[…]
The Global Gaze: The 43rd New York Film Festival
Much to admire, little to love Swank and stately, New York’s gala is like the grande dame of film festivals. Absent the frantic pace of Berlin, Cannes, or Toronto, New[…]
The Unbearable Lightness of Cannes: 2005 Diversions and Disappointments
Where did all the wild ones go? The excitement of Cannes is that it matters: 40,000 professionals, journalists, and business people descend on the upscale Mediterranean city to showcase products,[…]
Proof or Consequences: Miscast Mathematicians in Love: Paltrow Sees Dead (Crazy) People
Let no one who is not a geometer enter here. According to legend, Plato posted this sign above the door to his Academy in Athens to show just how much[…]
Family Is Hell and So Is the World: Talking to Michael Haneke at Cannes 2005
“All of us have these hidden moments in our lives . . .” “I wish you a disturbing evening!” This is how Michael Haneke, who won Best Director award at[…]
Asian · Directors · Interviews
The Immortality Blues: Talking with Fruit Chan About Dumplings
And other tasty subjects Fruit Chan’s Dumplings provoked unprecedented attention at the 2005 Melbourne International Film Festival, first and foremost because of its controversial and idiosyncratic narrative, but also because[…]
Actors & Personalities · Westerns
Golden Boy: The Sexy Ways of Joel McCrea
“Easy to overlook but endlessly rewarding to look over” Joel McCrea, an amiable, modest actor who turned down parts because he felt he wasn’t good enough for them, began his[…]
Extra! Extra! Read All About It! Clooney Defeats McCarthy!
Rosemary’s nephew clocks dairy state demagogue in Good Night, And Good Luck Generals and Hollywood directors have at least one thing in common: they both enjoy fighting the last war.1[…]
Talking About the Space Between Us All: On Forty Shades of Blue
Ira Sachs’ sophomore feature is charged with emotion When we first see Laura (Dina Korzun) in Ira Sachs’ knockout naturalistic melodrama Forty Shades of Blue, she is browsing in the[…]
An Unsawed Woman: Re-exhuming the Texas Chainsaw Massacre Remake on DVD
How Jessica Biel’s Moral Hotness Tamed the West While Tobe Hooper’s original 1973 Texas Chainsaw Massacre stands tall in the orchards of horror academia as a symbol of the dismemberment[…]
Tony Scott’s Domino: Too Dumb to Write About? Not Entirely!
Strong violence, pervasive language, sexual content/nudity and drug use I admit it. I am a sucker for films with pervasive language. In fact, the more pervasive it is, the more[…]
Witchcraft Through the Ages: The Best of the New Bewitched
“Where do alchemy and acting meet?” Perhaps the definition of a great screwball comedy is that it is an outstandingly funny film for which no real script is conceivable. For[…]
There’s Nothing You Can Do: Notes on William Friedkin’s The Guardian
We have met the enemy and he is us The Guardian (1990) concerns itself with the guardian spirits of trees. We’re told some guardian spirits are evil. In this very[…]
Bennett Miller’s Capote: Flatter Than Kansas, and Almost as Boring
Life is earnest, sure, but why does art have to be? “No one got further in history with less intellectual baggage than Cicero,”1 as Freddie Binkard Artz2 liked to say.[…]
Renoir on the Seine: Boudu Saved from Drowning on DVD
Criterion’s Renoir-fest continues with this classic Criterion has already remastered Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion(1938) and The Rules of the Game (1939), so the release of Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932),[…]
To Dance Without Warning: Reliving The Last Days of Chez Nous
You can go home again The Last Days of Chez Nous is the best film so far of Gillian Armstrong’s (no relation), and one of the most underrated Australian films[…]
Night of the Living Dead: Reappraising an Undead Classic
Romero’s canonical work remains timely decades later Introduction There has been a veritable outbreak of zombie films in the last few years, from Hollywood blockbusters Resident Evil (Anderson, 2002) and[…]
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