Activist & Political · Directors · Documentaries
On the Level: The Films of Frederick Wiseman
“The wonderful paradox of the Wiseman film is that what allows the layered complexities to unfold is the leveling of everything we are shown.”
A Funny Valentine to Crime: Where Jim Fits a Bill or Two
And Claude Rains.
Miracles and Mysteries: On Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
“Boonmee establishes Weerasethakul as our reigning master of the spiritual style: no one else moves across the lines that separate animals from humans and the living from the dead with greater ease or less fuss.”
Toys and Amateurs: On the Ideology of Games and Killers
“Those denied redemption, obviously, cannot raise the ascending tower, and embrace their brokenness with a furious energy that smiles only in clumsy destruction.”
Festivals & Awards · Lists · Reviews
Ten from 2010: Jacob Mikanowski: Selections from the Chicago and Warsaw International Film Festivals
#7: “A family drama about the dangers of beekeeping.”
Ten from 2010: Erich Kuersten
#7: “A story starring a child is allowed to be bloodcurdlingly violent without softening it with hand-holding guilt or apathetic abstraction.”
Jew or No Jew? David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin tell the story of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook in The Social Network
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The Last American Ruffalo: Lisa Cholodenko’s Lesbian “Homespun” Family Values
“In order to rectify her own misery with judgmental, shrewish wino Annette, Julianne Moore has to suffer the shame of being caught cheating, the way Dick Cheney had to suffer the blame for all the waterboarding we needed to squash terrorism.”
Activist & Political · Essays · New Media
“Gekko Redux, Zuckerberg ‘Rock Star,’ and the President: Players All”: Draft Subtitle
“For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being — the self-made man — the American industrialist.” —Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957
Metropolis, the Reconstructed Original Cut: Does It Make Sense? Does It Need To?
“The resurrection of Fritz Lang’s original cut has revealed how well this film functions with its associative network of image layered onto an adventure/SF thriller, but the reasons for its mysterious pull coalesce into an x-factor that resists analysis.”
Short Takes: Cinematography: Fellini’s Innovative Merging of Subject and Object in the POV in La Dolce Vita
“And it insists on looking.”
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Interviews
Loving the Bad: An Interview with Frankie Latina and Sasha Grey on Modus Operandi
“Any director who shoots a grindhouse film without exquisite, triumphant, dangerous, and naked women is doing a disservice to the genre and should move into a different field.”
Something That Festers: The Silence of the Lambs, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the Visual Pleasures of Horror
“We’re drawn to and fascinated by horror because the genre reminds us that we have both outsides and insides, skin and guts, eyes and gray matter, ideas and appetites.”
Not Us at All: On Des Hommes et des Dieux (Of Gods and Men)
“At the moment of greatest peril, the monks respond by having a little soirée.”
SuperBob: Robert Downey Jr. as Star and Superhero
“Like Tony Stark, who is saved by his symbolic birth into a superhero body, Robert Downey Jr. is saved by his rebirth into the movies with a superbody.”
Dads of Great Adventure: A Guide to Cinema’s Post-Apocalyptic Hyper-Parent
Those people had names! Families!
Actors & Personalities · Music & Musicals
Yeah, I’m 56 and She’s 24. What’s Your Point? Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron, frequently though not continuously irresistible in Daddy Long Legs
Come on, do the Sluefoot? That I can resist.
Abject Objects: The Sinister Secrets of Andrew Currie’s Fido
“You weren’t very nice, but I’m sorry you’re dead”
Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: The Black Pirate, Night of the Hunter, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Howl, The Elia Kazan Collection
An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases
Crazy Dreams: The World Of Blake Edwards
“The truth is that humour and terror play an equal part in his vision, which takes shape at the point where the two extremes meet.”
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