Actors & Personalities · Reviews
Brad and Julia Go South in The Mexican
Julia Roberts has pits! Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts are two of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Each has an annual income that oscillates comfortably from $20 million to $70[…]
Asian · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Art Film Hidden Inside the Chop-Socky Flick
Ang Lee: third-wave feminist? The reviews of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon have been positive – but the critics, somehow, seem more impressed by the trimmings than the turkey.[…]
Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
The Girls Can’t Help It: Baise-Moi (2000)
Feminist screed or fetish-screwfest? Flip a coin Female revenge films aren’t exactly an unknown quantity, especially in the exploitation circuit. Pam Grier was one of the genre’s superstars in the[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
Sweet Movies: Four by Dusan Makavejev: Man Is Not a Bird; WR: Mysteries of the Organism; Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator; Innocence Unprotected
Free-associating with a master of free cinema “Free cinema” has the dull ring of an oxymoron. The extreme level of control required and the mass of pressures that collide in[…]
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Feedback from the Global Village: Culture Docs
From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China offers three documentaries for the price of one; Genghis Blues is too shaggy for words The collapse of Cold War rigidities and[…]
“Hand Me That 14-Inch Willy!” The Puppet Artistry of Barry Purves
This brilliant Brit’s sleight-of-hand breathes life into wood and wire At a symposium on puppet animation in Seattle a few years ago, Barry Purves, an alumnus of the Aardman Studios[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Poverty Row, Wardour Street: The Last Years of British Exploitation Cinema
This golden age is more like fool’s gold, but it has its thrills Even as a Brit, when I think of exploitation cinema, I tend to think of Roger Corman,[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · Reviews
San Francisco’s 2001 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival
Celebrating activism and exposing some of the more chaotic corners of world politics Despite an avalanche of news and quasi-news programs, tabloid yakfests, and crudities like Cops, Survivor, and the[…]
Asian · Directors · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Blood Spear, Mt. Fuji: Uchida Tomu’s Conflicted Comeback from Manchuria (1955)
Resurrection and renewal in postwar Japanese cinema, as seen through Tomu’s 1955 masterpiece Following Japan’s surrender in World War II, the colonial tables were turned. The Chinese took control of[…]
Shaddup! The 2001 San Francisco Silent Film Festival
All’s quiet on the cinematic front in this seductive survey of the artful ’20s Superman had his Fortress of Solitude; San Francisco has its Silent Film Festival. This annual event,[…]
The 2001 San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival
Gangbangers, sex robots, and babydykes, oh my! Now in its 19th year, the San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) has become an increasingly plush and rather important venue for[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Something to Come Out To: Gay Documentaries Triumph in the 2001 SFILGFF
A bumper crop of docs scale the heights and trawl the depths of queer culture “There was nothing to come out to. We never heard the word homosexual. The media[…]
Documentaries · Exploitation & Erotica
Cass Paley’s Wadd: The Life and Times of John Holmes (1999)
Livin’ large with the Hung One Porn has had its share of superstars, but none were bigger – in every sense – than John Holmes. This “little boy with a[…]
Documentaries · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Don McGlynn’s Louis Prima: The Wildest! (1999): A Documentary
The illustrious history of the king of the hepcats (and the queen of deadpan) Louis Prima and his wife Keely Smith were a staple of ’50s and ’60s variety TV,[…]
Life Is Shit – Let’s Put on a Show! Stephen Sondheim’s Company on DVD
“I guess it all works if you revere Stephen Sondheim.” Have you been kicking yourself ever since May 3, 1970, when you weren’t there for the marathon recording session that[…]
Mother Russia! Josef von Sternberg’s Scarlet Empress on Criterion DVD
“Some of the mise-en-scene has a suffocating beauty, as in the bravura marriage sequence where the screen is clogged to the breaking point with images – a strategy that shows[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Fred and Ginger Savor La Belle Romance in Swing Time
“Shall we take it straight through?” Swing Time is the last Fred & Ginger musical to have it all – lots of great songs from Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields,[…]
Asian · Historical & Epic · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
Gohatto, or, the End of Oshima Nagisa?
Truly subversive or mere cinematic “seasoning,” in the director’s own phrase? I am the first to admit that Oshima Nagisa’s Gohatto (1999, more literally “Against the Law,” but titillatingly translated[…]
Book review: My Son Divine, by Frances Milstead
My Son Divine, by Frances Milstead, with Kevin Heffernan and Steve Yeager. New York: Alyson Books, 2001. 256 pages, $18.95. ISBN 1555835945 Divine has been dead for 13 years, and[…]
Book review: The Nashville Chronicles, by Jan Stuart
The Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman’s Masterpiece, by Jan Stuart. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. 366 pages, $26.00 Fans of 1975’s Nashville, of which there are many, have reasons[…]
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