By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Much has been deservedly written on Richard C. Sarafian’s existential road movie Vanishing Point (1971), a shambling, glorious wreck of a film that nevertheless manages to achieve a certain sort of ragged splendor in its countercultural tale of loner driver Kowalski (Barry Newman), who takes on […]
The Narcissistic Sociopathology of Gender: Craig’s Wife and The Hitch-Hiker, Part 1
March 2, 2014
By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. It’s instructive to study the work of Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino in context with one another. Though at first glance, one might easily conclude that the only thing they have in common is that they were the only women who managed to direct films during […]
Preliminary Notes on the Monochrome Universe
February 26, 2014
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Lately I’ve been thinking about black and white movies, and how they’ve almost completely disappeared from the current cinematic landscape.[1] There are occasional projects shot in black and white, but with cinema rapidly becoming an all-digital medium, and black and white film stock almost impossible to […]
“Illusion and Reality” Films: Genre and Apotheosis
February 18, 2014
By Brian Russell Graham. A great many of the most popular films of recent decades are characterized by a character’s struggle to separate illusory worlds from ordinary reality. Examples range from the Wachowskis’ The Matrix (1999) to Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of […]
From Gangster to Master: the Forgotten Edward G. Robinson
January 29, 2014
By Matthew Sorrento. I. The Look Robinson’s legion of fans grew after the actor delivered an intense desperation as Rico Bandello in Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar (1931). A hood who embraces a Macbethian drive to kill and consume, Rico soon witnesses the betrayal of his sideman, then ponders his own […]
Rocky Balboa and the Politics of Urban Renewal
January 22, 2014
By Jon Kraszewski. Coming at the end of a film series that had degenerated into useless portraits of cartoonish characters and simplified visions of social issues, the 2006 film Rocky Balboa probably attracted very little attention from progressive film critics. I, admittedly, decided to watch it to indulge my fondness […]
The Mother’s Role in Bergman’s Persona
January 20, 2014
By Terence Diggory. CONTENTS The Critical Audience Dramatis Personae Child’s Play Alma Mater Sons and Lovers Fear of Lying Fear of Dying The Primary Audience The Critical Audience Ingmar Bergman saw the first hints of a new film as “a brightly colored thread sticking out of the dark sack of […]
True Love, Pride, and Passion: Re-viewing Stephen Frears’s Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
January 13, 2014
By Lesley Brill. In Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses (most of the plot of which Frears’s Dangerous Liaisons follows faithfully), love and passion dominate religion until the end. Concluding his epistolary novel, however, Laclos sends Cécile de Volanges back to the convent to become a nun and visits […]
One-Location Films and How They Achieve Their Success
January 5, 2014
By Victoria Tickle. One-location (or one-room) films are films that do exactly what they say on their metaphorical tins: their narratives take place within the confines of one location or one room. In order to compensate for their lack of locations, settings and (potentially) character interactions, one-location films have to […]
Our Children, or the Importance of Medea
December 21, 2013
By Christopher Sharrett. Joachim Lafosse’s Our Children (Á perdre la raison, a.k.a. Loving without Reason, a much more sensible title) put me in mind of Catherine Corsini’s Leaving (Partir, 2009), in part because both films represent the continued promise of the international cinema during the US cinema’s ongoing willed bankruptcy […]