Book review: Addicted, ed. by Jack Stevenson
Addicted: The Myth and Menace of Drugs in Film, ed. by Jack Stevenson. London: Creation Books, 2000. Trade paper, $19.95, 272pp, ISBN 1-84068-023-7 America’s War on Drugs has been raging[…]
Book reviews: Jacques Tourneur, George Cukor, John Ford, White Zombie, Warner Sisters, and More
Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall, by Chris Fujiwara. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Trade paper, $18.95, 328pp, ISBN 0-8018-6561-1. Jacques Tourneur has long been a favorite of horror fans, French[…]
Robert Altman’s Gosford Park: Not Renoir, but Not Bad
Robert Altman gets all warm and fuzzy on your ass Say what you like about Robert Altman, the guy doesn’t quit. Altman didn’t hit the big time until 1969, when[…]
The 20th Bergamo Film Meeting: March 9-17, 2002
This fine Italian festival features wide variety, no polemics When Sandro Zambetti initiated this modest festival in 1982, he aimed to “make a difference at a practical level.” Invoking no[…]
The Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival: February 2002
An engaging mix of cinema – two-thirds of it Canadian – visits the Great White North’s “postcard village on steroids” The Victoria Independent Film and Video Festival, now in its[…]
The Belfort International Film Festival: France 2001
Identity politics, urban terror, and Bulle Ogier distinguish this festival from some of its more pretentious peers When you think French film festival, you automatically think Cannes or even Deauville.[…]
The King Steps Out: Goodbye to Billy Wilder (1906-2002)
“A brain full of razor blades and a heart full of chutzpah” In his screenplay for The Fortune Cookie (1966), Billy Wilder, who has died at age 95, described ‘Whiplash[…]
Anti-Heroics: The Superman Films of Richard Lester
“While the first Superman film, directed by Richard Donner (on which Lester served as an uncredited producer), is essentially reverential and respectful towards the subject, Lester’s attitude in his second[…]
Catch Me If You Can: The Tarantino Legacy
Has Tarantino gone underground or is he revving up to zap the box office with another mega hit? Another whole year has gone by and still no new film from[…]
African American · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Reggae Heaven: Rockers (1978) on DVD
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[…]
Why Won’t You Love Me? Richard Glatzer’s The Fluffer
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.[…]
Undoing Oedipus: Feminism and Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher
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,[…]
Alienation and Perversion: Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher
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
It’s Alive! Jan Svankmajer’s Little Otik (Otesánek)
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[…]
Todd Field’s In the Bedroom: Wake me when it’s over!
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 Burden of Dreams: Gianni Amelio’s The Way We Laughed
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[…]
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[…]
Activist & Political · LGBT & Queer
All Is Fair in Love and War Videos: GLBT Men and Women in the Military
Don’t ask, don’t tell, but do watch “If they took all the gays and lesbians out of the military there wouldn’t be enough people left to defend Rhode Island!” —[…]
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[…]
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