Activist & Political · Reviews
“They Come in Peace”: Andy Fickman’s Race to Witch Mountain
“Only saviors can save polluted planets, yellow cab drivers are losers . . .”
Of Perfect Plans and Acts of Creation: Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing
“His plan mirrors Johnny’s, that is, pieces of the plan are known to one person: Johnny and Stanley; and not until the end do we see most of their pieces come into place.
Activist & Political · Reviews · War
How James Stewart Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb: Anthony Mann’s Strategic Air Command
“Chew popcorn to avoid grinding teeth, comrades.”
Far from Elementary: Debra Chasnoff’s Straightlaced: How Gender’s Got Us All Tied Up
“I told him, ‘I’m not gay. My neck was cold.'”
Playing It Safe with John Dillinger: Michael Mann’s Public Enemies
“Dillinger had recently undergone plastic surgery to alter his face and to try to remove his fingerprints. But Public Enemies does not dare to depict that kind of desperation and that determination to survive under any circumstances.”
Roman Polanski: What’s on Trial?
What is fascinating about the Polanski case is that it is not particularly about Polanski. Looking at the debate raised in France (where I live) and the United States –[…]
Past Sunset: Noir in the West
“I don’t need other people. I don’t need help. I can take care of me.”
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Interviews
Film and Film and Film: An Interview with Jonas Mekas
“One who knows how to, as they say, ‘read’ the images, can tell everything about me.”
Letter from New York (c. 1980)
“The problem is other people crazy people.”
Activist & Political · Drama · Reviews
Critical Distance: What Knowing Knows About 9/11
“Where Cloverfield provocatively blurs the line between being ‘about’ 9/11 and being (mere) entertainment, Knowing lands squarely in the latter camp.”
“Do You Find Me Sadistic?” Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds
“This is the World War II film confronting its Jungian shadow, acknowledging its darkest impulses and finally purging them.”
Reviews · Thrillers & Action · War
Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: Film Kills
“Tarantino thus concedes some of his omnipotence to the medium he so deftly manipulates.”
Activist & Political · Crime · Historical & Epic · Reviews
The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover: Larry Cohen’s The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover
How a movie exposé of “abuse of power” defends those in power and their institutions
Can’t Repeat the Past? Of Course You Can’t – and Shouldn’t
Filming The Great Gatsby in the 21st Century
From Air Dolls to the Anchorage: The 2009 Vancouver International Film Festival
“VIFF remains the unspoiled oasis for cinephiles looking to get away from it all.”
Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
Lucky 13: The 2009 Portland Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
Getting out of the ghetto
Bucking the Tide: The 2009 New York Film Festival
This year’s strong, idiosyncratic line-up reminds us that moviegoing can still be more than “a museum experience”
After the Surge: The 2009 Melbourne International Film Festival
“An alternative agenda for the festival might be: what can we make of modernism?”
The Dead Things We Already Are: Pod People, Body Snatching, and the Horrors of Business as Usual
“We keep returning to this story about pod people because we’re terrified of the continuing erosion of our physicality in the postmodern era.”
Porno to the People: The Danish Revolution That Liberated America
“Tease was out, honesty was in.”
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