No Country For Old Men – Breaking the Rules
[SPOILERPHOBES BEWARE!! The following post comments in a general fashion on the endings of No Country for Old Men and The Great Silence, as well as what happens to Marion[…]
The White Reindeer (Valkoinen Peura, 1952)
Christa Lang Fuller, widow of Sam, in response to my post re 31 Essential Horror Films writes: “Please add Valkoinen peura (1952) to the top of your list as one[…]
Kim Masters, Natural-Born Killer
Kim Masters, Slate’s assassin for hire, who clearly does not know the meaning of the words “You’ll never have lunch in this town again,” pisses all over Jerry Seinfeld’s major[…]
Still, Life: Looking at Jia Zhang-ke’s Recent Masterpiece
“Present-day society doesn’t suit us because we’re too nostalgic.” August 8, 2007 saw a huge celebration in Beijing marking the one-year countdown to the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.[…]
The Searcher: On Ethan Edwards and John Ford’s Masterpiece
“Ride away . . . ride away . . .” John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) opens with the arrival of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) at his brother’s home in southern[…]
The Wages of Skin: The Irrepressible Rise of All-American Smut
Linda Lovelace meets the Forty Thieves Having seen how sixties San Francisco spawned a generation of irreverent young celluloid porn barons — “Before The Green Door” in Bright Lights 57[…]
“What Is Beauty Worth?” On Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
(And an Artist) Tom Tykwer’s film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer has the bones of a cinematic fairytale (with its male narration and ethereal lighting) and the flesh of[…]
Safety First: The 45th New York Film Festival
The 2007 NYFF’s more cautious than courageous this year For a long time, the New York Film Festival was the inarguable heavyweight in town, practically on a direct feed from[…]
How Did History Happen? The 2007 Melbourne International Film Festival
“Each stranger is a figure of seemingly infinite potential, pinned down to a changing series of points.” Given that the new director of the Melbourne International Film Festival, Richard Moore,[…]
The Passion of the Auteurist: On Man of Cinema: Pierre Rissient
“It’s not enough to like this movie” He has been called the Kissinger of Cinema and the King of Cannes. Quentin Tarantino describes him as “a samurai warrior for films[…]
Mother to the Man? Rethinking Luc Besson’s Léon
Age is just a number I was both enchanted and disturbed by viewing Léon again today. Luc Besson’s film has undoubted charm, and the performances, especially by the precocious Natalie[…]
Made in China: Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky on Their Travels Across Manufactured Landscapes
“We’ve created a world that buffers us from nature.” In the past few years, there has been a healthy emission of premium-grade eco-conscious documentaries — Darwin’s Nightmare, Our Daily Bread,[…]
“Give My Love to the Sunrise” The Lady from Shanghai
Welles bids farewell to Hayworth and Hollywood With Wong Kar Wai’s remake of The Lady from Shanghai (1948) set for release in 2008, it is a fitting time to re-evaluate[…]
Whose Noir Is It, Anyway? Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly
Mike Hammer deconstructed, or Mike Hammer disrespected? Back in the day — way, way back in the day, when life in America was not a total girlie show — Americans[…]
IMAX – The Bigger Picture: Everything New Is Old Again
Superman, we need you! The BFI London IMAX is an ever-present background entity to all those who leave Waterloo Station and descend the steps into the city. Since its erection[…]
Reflecting the Theoretical Beyond: The Quay Brothers Talk About Art, Life, and The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes
“It’s hard to be intuitive when you’ve got 42 crew behind you and they’re like, ‘Look, they don’t know what to do here. They’re panicking, look at them!’” Introduction Ever[…]
The Poisoned Story: The Myth of Magic in Wait ‘Til You’re Older
“Even the least imaginative people are incredulous about aging: surely this isn’t the only story, the only body I get to inhabit.” To start off, Hong Kong films may not[…]
Will the Shark Bite? G. W. Pabst and The Threepenny Opera
“Macheath: I’m not asking you to put on an opera.” ~ Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera, Act 1, scene 2 Down the crooked lanes of London, gangster Mackie Messer stalks a[…]
Colleen Moore Comes Back: On the Rediscovered, Restored 1927 Rarity Her Wild Oat
“Go sit on a flagpole!” Film is inherently fragile, so no success story feels more impressive or heartening than the sudden reappearance of an artwork thought irretrievably lost in the[…]
The Devil Wears a Fatsuit: John Travolta in Hairspray
“Even if the new Hairspray seems a welcome return to camp for Travolta, his mock-seriousness is as frozen as ever.” When Hairspray was released in 1988, cult cinema fans lamented the softening[…]
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