A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. Joseph McBride’s latest mammoth book, well-written and copiously documented as usual, is an unusual production in the field of cinema studies. It is a companion volume to his earlier 1992 text, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success, which took issue with the traditional estimation of […]
Reassessing Blue Velvet: a Criterion Collection Release
Christopher Sharrett
June 4, 2019
By Christopher Sharrett. I have had a difficult history with David Lynch’s breakthrough film Blue Velvet (1986), and for that matter, much of the director’s work. At first, I thought the film a good antidote to the “morning in America” claptrap that was a major feature of the Reagan era […]
Pondering the Ponderous: Malick’s A Hidden Life (Cannes 2019)
Ali Moosavi
May 28, 2019
By Ali Moosavi. My relationship with Terence Malick films has been love and hate. Watching Badlands (1973) back in the 70s was like a breath of fresh air; a film that, for me, has aged extremely well. Then the experience of watching a 70mm version of Days of Heaven (1978) in […]
La vérité: the French Woman’s Prison (Criterion Collection)
Tony Williams
May 14, 2019
By Tony Williams. Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907-1977) is best known as the director of Le Corbeau (1943), Quai des Orfevres (1947), The Wages of Fear (1953), Diabolique (1955) for the majority of viewers. Although he beat Hitchcock in obtaining the rights for the fourth film, “The Master” gained his victory in purchasing […]
Long Walk to Freedom: The Silence of Others
Michael Sandlin
May 6, 2019
By Michael Sandlin. Despite its low-budget workmanlike feel, this documentary from Emmy-winning directors Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar – and produced by Spanish directorial titan Pedro Almodovar – just may be one of the most socio-historically significant European documentaries of recent years. Although it may not have the depth and […]
Planning and Execution: Werner Herzog’s Scenarios II and Meeting Gorbachev
John Duncan Talbird
May 3, 2019
By John Duncan Talbird. Werner Herzog should win the Nobel Prize in Literature. If Bob Dylan can win it, I don’t see why a filmmaker can’t and it’s hard to think of another director who has done so much for both the narrative and documentary film, in fact, who has […]
The Struggle for a City’s Soul: Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (Criterion Collection)
Jeremy Carr
April 30, 2019
By Jeremy Carr. Newly released from Tegal Prison, Franz Biberkopf cautiously looks over a custodial stretch of land just inside the wall that separates the penitentiary from the city streets. He walks a bit, hesitantly but with a slight smile. The camera is close on Franz, tracking this emphatically prolonged […]
Never Look Away: Art Against Death
Christopher Sharrett
April 29, 2019
By Christopher Sharrett. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Never Look Away is a good – but not great – film of this past season that deserves recognition; I wanted to wait to remark on it until a Region 1 Blu-ray arrived, which apparently won’t happen until the fall, so I purchased […]
I Made the Documentary The Cult of JT LeRoy, and I Must Discuss Savannah Knoop’s New Film
Marjorie Sturm
April 26, 2019
By Marjorie Sturm. The fact that JT LeRoy swallows and sings Albert’s platitudes makes the film fairly unwatchable for those who are hip to or suffered from the story.” I am the director and producer of the The Cult of JT LeRoy, the documentary that explores the elaborate literary hoax perpetrated […]
Never the Victim: Louise Brooks and The Chaperone
Thomas Gladysz.
April 16, 2019
By Thomas Gladysz. The Chaperone, the first theatrical release from PBS Masterpiece, is a story of beginnings as well as a kind of origin story. Its plot revolves around the summer the 16-year-old Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson) – four years before she found fame as a film star – […]