A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. If Dr. Johnson had James Bosworth as his chronicler in the inimitable The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), so the departed star Charles Bronson is posthumously fortunate enough to have Paul Talbot. On the Set with Charles Bronson (BearManor, 2016) is an enlarged […]
The Enormous Gap Between Dream and Realization: Scenarios by Werner Herzog
January 8, 2018
A Book Review Essay by John Duncan Talbird. There are snowy peaks all around, majestic crests, and the mountains tower like Holy Cathedrals. Very clear, icy, silent air, frost lying on the hoary ground, all in deep, majestic silence. From the mountain crests, glacial tongues lick down into the depths. Clouds […]
More Than a Headrush: Frank Henenlotter’s Brain Damage (1988)
By Matthew Sorrento. Traditional readings of the film see it as a commentary on the damning nature of chemical dependency. While the theme’s presence is undeniable, the film also depicts the freeing and often empowering nature of stimulants.” After the release of his horror-comedy Re-Animator (1985), debuting filmmaker Stuart Gordon […]
Noir from the States to the Ilses: The Stranger and Appointment with Crime from Olive Films
By Tony Williams. 1946 was an “annus mirabilis” (“amazing year” for those who never studied Latin) for American, British film noir, and many of its international counterparts. Both appearing a year after the end of World War Two, The Stranger and Appointment with Crime were generic achievements in their own right […]
Orson Ascending: The Stranger (1946) from Kino Classics and Othello (1951) from the Criterion Collection
By Tony Williams. Following the release of several new remastered DVDs after the 2015 Orson Welles Centenary and the expected completion of his last unedited feature The Other Side of the Wind sometime in the future, this year sees two more additions continuing Welles’s legacy. Rather than “Orpheus Descending,” it […]
Truth and Consequences: Conversations with Buñuel by Max Aub, translated and edited by Julie Jones
A Book Review Essay by Jeremy Carr. “Even today, I’ve no idea what the truth is, or what I did with it.” – Luis Buñuel, My Last Sigh Compiling biographical information about Luis Buñuel is no easy task, and the contrived predisposition of the iconoclastic filmmaker doesn’t usually help. Fond […]
The “Complete Italianization” of the Western: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from Kino Lorber
By Tony Williams. This is the moment when the Italianization of the Western was complete. –Alberto Moravia, quoted by Christopher Frayling As most film departments merge into Media conglomerates and student knowledge of past films diminishes due to increasing time constraints, it is all the more important that the world […]
Mark Felt: History as Mysticism
By Christopher Sharrett. One of the characteristics of our militarized society, aside from the constant deluge of cop shows, superhero movies, and inane affirmations of family life, is the erasure of history. We may think we get the past in reliable form via the PBS channels and other “respected” media […]
The Charming “Lithuanian Cary Grant”: Walter Matthau in Hopscotch on Criterion
By Christopher Weedman. Walter Matthau (1920-2000) was among Hollywood’s most charismatic stars of the late 1960s and 1970s. During this fascinating period where New Hollywood favorites such as Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, and even Woody Allen were becoming sex symbols despite possessing unconventional looks, Matthau parlayed his “Best […]
A Haneke Masterpiece: The Piano Teacher (Criterion Collection)
By Christopher Sharrett. I count Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001) among his supreme masterpieces, along with Code Unknown (2000), Cache (2005), and The White Ribbon (2009). His “glaciation trilogy” (so named for its examination of the death of affect in the West, and the emotional freezing-over and fading of […]