Ozu’s Good Morning on DVD
Schoolboys on strike, farting contests, and a mysteriously acquired washer make up the world of this Japanese classic Of the three great directors of classical Japanese cinema, Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) remains[…]
Fellini’s Variety Lights on DVD
A tacky theatrical troupe finds fun and romance – and occasionally a paycheck – on the road in Fellini’s classic Variety Lights (1950) is a rarity in the career of Federico[…]
Documentaries · Experimental & Underground
Documentaries: Peter Wintonick’s Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment (2000)
The “moment” is both defined and celebrated in this exceptional documentary “I don’t know what truth is. Truth is something unattainable. We can’t think we’re creating truth with a camera.[…]
Russian Cinema After Perestroika: Notes from the 2000 Thessaloniki International Film Festival
A heady tour of alternative world cinema from one of Europe’s oldest festivals Repentant sinners, ideological misfits, vindictive peasant workers, obsessed lovers, and aging prostitutes are but a few of[…]
Achievement and Crisis: Hong Kong Cinema in the ’80s
This article appeared originally in the all-Hong Kong issue of Bright Lights #13 (1994). * * * A comprehensive look at a seminal decade in one of the world’s great[…]
Alive and Kicking: The Kung Fu Film Is a Legend
This article appeared originally in the all-Hong Kong issue of Bright Lights #13 (1994). * * * HK’s martial arts film stylishly bridge time, space, and now cultures More popularly[…]
Masterpieces of Japanese Silent Cinema on DVD-ROM
Japanese silent films are no longer silent in this fabulous – and expensive – DVD-ROM Western interest in Japanese film falls mainly into three realms: the Godzilla movies and their endless cheesy[…]
Chabrol, Losey, Antonioni: Three Classic Eurofilms: Les Bonnes Femmes, Eva, Il Grido on DVD
“La dolce vita” is more bitter than sweet in these razor-sharp rarities DVD has become the preeminent forum for high-art cinema on video, and the trend shows no sign of[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
A Black Silence Almost as Violent as Laughter: Jean Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy
The arthouse staple gets a gorgeous makeover in this DVD set brimming with extras Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) has been called the most versatile artist of the twentieth century, and in[…]
Three Early Kurosawas: Drunken Angel, Scandal, I Live in Fear
Tubercular yakuza, scandalous artists, and postwar paranoids duke it out with the world For a variety of reasons, Western audiences have enshrined Kurosawa as the preferred director of Japan’s golden[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
Tableaux Vivant: Notes on Lawrence Jordan
Jordan’s collage films are “moving” in two senses “Animation” connotes many things to us jaded moderns – Bugs Bunny and variants, the dreaded Disney and its hellspawn, Spike and Mike[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground
Brief Candles: The Films of Warren Sonbert
The work of an avant-garde master restored I had the privilege of sitting with Warren Sonbert (1947-1995) at some of San Francisco’s press screenings in the several years that preceded[…]
Interview with Béla Tarr: About Werckmeister Harmonies (Cannes 2000, Director’s Fortnight)
A bar in a provincial town. A strange dance is underway, with three drunken patrons enacting an eclipse, sun, moon, and earth circling and interposing. The dance is choreographed by[…]
“Are You Sure?” Edgar G. Ulmer’s Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957)
Monsters are bad enough, but how about all those relatives? For cinema, the postwar period – particularly the 1950s when atomic consciousness became a permanent part of America’s psychic landscape[…]
“No Man Is a Saint”: Douglas Sirk’s A Scandal in Paris (1946)
“What distinguishes A Scandal in Paris is its additional air of evanescence, as if the Old Europe of charming woodland merry-go-rounds and dowagers in castles and romantic criminals was now a[…]
LGBT & Queer · Reviews · SF & Fantasy
The Nightmare in the Fairy Tale: Francois Ozon’s Criminal Lovers (1999)
A modern-day Hansel and Gretel take on love, sex, and death with rapturous results A recent selection at the 24th San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, François Ozon’s[…]
Burning Love: Deepa Mehta’s Fire (1996)
The first of the Canadian-Indian auteur’s controversial attacks on the privileges of patriarchy Fire is a fascinating anomaly. It’s an Indian feature written and directed by a woman, Deepa Mehta;[…]
Teetering Teens: From the Edge of the City (1998)
Couldn’t they have just sent us a postcard? Following in the footsteps of those overrated paeans to teenage male angst, Hate and Trainspotting (with a dash of My Own Private[…]
Ozon Meets Fassbinder: Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000)
A stylized look at one of the colder corners of gay petit bourgeois life Water Drops on Burning Rocks was Fassbinder’s first play, written at age 19. Shelved and apparently[…]
Documentaries · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
A Tired Bag of Tricks: Nick Broomfield’s Fetishes
Literal commodity fetishism in the far fringes of New York’s S&M scene In the mid-’70s, I spent some time in Los Angeles in the hetero s&m subculture. My best friend[…]
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