Closely Watched Trains and The Shop on Main Street on DVD
Check out these two favorites from Czech cinema’s Age of Camelot Those who fondly remember grainy, popping, and cloudy prints of old foreign films will be happy to know that[…]
Carry On Sitcom: The British Sitcom Spin-off Film 1968-1980
These cinematic dogs get a pat on the head before being given the boot When Ealing comedy, the cinematic brand that uniquely embodied 20 years of idiosyncratically “charming” English humour,[…]
Return of the Repressed: The Resurgence of the French B-Movie
Despite the enduring lure of Gerard Depardieu in a frock coat, inventive French auteurs are reviving the low-budget genre. One of the key films of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc[…]
Directors · Essays · Producers & Studios · Reviews
The Dharma Blues: Or How I Brooded but Did Not Weep Over Kubrick’s Bomb
Opening the Eyes Wide Shut censorship battles for a close look A recent viewing of Eyes Wide Shut (1999) on HBO reminded me when, three summers ago, I had counted[…]
Book review: The Western Genre, by John Saunders
The Western Genre: From Lordsburg to Big Whiskey, by John Saunders. London: Wallflower Press, £11.99. New York: Columbia University Press, $16.95. 2001, 144pp, ISBN 1-903364-12-4 The best film books combine[…]
Book review: Searching for John Ford, by Joseph McBride
Searching for John Ford: A Life, by Joseph McBride. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001. Cloth, $40.00. ISBN 0-312-24232-8. John Ford, born Sean Aloysius O’Fearna in Cape Elizabeth, Maine in[…]
Documentaries · Historical & Epic
Beauty and the Beast: The Architecture of Doom, a Documentary
The artistic underpinnings of Nazi terror The puzzle of Hitler and the Holocaust continues to twist in and out of the popular consciousness like a particularly hardy virus, most recently[…]
Dionysus in Georgia: Paradjanov on DVD: The Color of Pomegranates; The Legend of Suram Fortress; Ashik Kerib; Hagop Hoynatanian; Paradjanov: A Requiem
Three features, a documentary, and a rare short showcase the peculiar pleasures of the late Russian director “Surrealism,” “incitement to suicide,” and my favorite, “traffic in art objects leading to[…]
Mozart’s The Magic Flute on DVD
Ingmar Bergman does it again! Back in 1976, Ingmar Bergman made a movie of Mozart’s famous opera The Magic Flute.1 Twenty-five years later, it remains the finest operatic film ever[…]
We’ll Always Have Paris: Now that René Clair’s Le Million is on DVD
Not many extras but lots of fun What was Paris like back in the twenties? I mean, what was it really like? Well, if you cared for such things as[…]
Dixiana on DVD: Has Everything but Bill Robinson’s Feet
Where’s the rest of him? Why, Roan Group Archival Entertainment, why? Why did you go to the trouble of restoring the thoroughly lame 1930 musical Dixiana and then fail to[…]
Mondo Tranny: Monika Treut’s Gendernauts
This love letter to San Francisco’s tranny community is a little too loving Gendernauts (1999) opens with a curious and none too appetizing image – a mangy old spotted hyena.[…]
Gore Galore: Takashi Miike’s Audition
This is one audition you may want to skip Reports from the front lines of early cinema suggest that many viewers during the ‘teens and before were terrified by the[…]
Mr. Belvedere Joins the Scouts: Mister Scoutmaster’s Man-Boy Love
What’s going on in that tent? At a time when the Boy Scouts of America is reeling from the backlash,1 and the backlash to the backlash,2 to the Supreme Court’s[…]
On and Off, On and Off: Riding Through Roger Rabbit’s World
There’s more trouble in Toontown than even the Toons imagined Cartoons and animated features have never been strictly made for children. But not until the 1960s did the cartoon gain[…]
Gay Pride, Italian Style: Ferzan Ozpetek’s Le Fate Ignoranti (Ignorant Fairies)
Ozpetek’s queer melodrama excites and disappoints in equal measure Italian cinema is finally discovering that films with gay and lesbian characters can do extremely well at the box-office, in spite[…]
Occupied Territory: Sylvie Groulx’s In the Shadow of Hollywood
America’s cultural colonizing is scored in a French-Canadian documentary you’ll probably never see Imagine if you walked into your local Starbucks and could only order caramel lattes. No cappuccinos, no[…]
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals · Reviews
Fred and Ginger Miss a Step in Shall We Dance
“Let’s call the whole thing off?” Shall We Dance (1937) is the last and least of the great Fred & Ginger musicals, saved from ignominy by a superb score courtesy[…]
Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · Music & Musicals
Rave On: Five Indie Music Docs on Four DVDs: Dancin’ Barefoot/Blank Generation; Rage: 20 Years of Punk Rock West Coast Style; Songs for Cassavetes; Better Living Through Circuitry
Every social movement needs a soundtrack, and, despite widespread reports of apathetic youth and political stasis, the twilight years of the twentieth century were rife with both. The indie movements[…]
La Vie en Rage: Rampaging Women in Five French-Language Films: Les Voleurs; Regarde la Mer; Dreamlife of Angels; Rosetta; Baise-moi
The searing images of the September 11 attacks initially prompted literal references to action movies, the only place most viewers had ever seen fireballs that size. The planners of these[…]
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