By Paul Risker. “The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” – Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987) Desire is both a life sustaining and a destructive force, from which derives the human sin of greed. While desire is an emotional experience […]
Looking Back at The Graduate
May 24, 2016
By Jeremy Carr. Ben Braddock, Dustin Hoffman’s titular character from Mike Nichols’ 1967 film, The Graduate, is first seen staring straight ahead aboard an airplane. He looks off in a trance-like gaze that will be repeated throughout the film. This type of far-away expression is the perfect physical pose— and […]
The Heart of the Melodrama: Brief Encounter on Criterion
By Christopher Sharrett. When I think about the melodrama I tend to focus on the masterpieces of Max Ophuls, Douglas Sirk, Vincente Minnelli, Irving Rapper, Edmund Goulding, King Vidor, and others, all of whom helped define the concerns of the genre. My bias favoring American (or émigré) filmmakers has tended […]
Forever Revisited: In a Lonely Place on Criterion
By Tony Williams. Whether available theatrically or 16mm, VHS, and previous DVD formats, Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950) has always ranked high as a great Hollywood film either in the realms of authorship or genre. This year Criterion has added the film to its collection and this version […]
The Chaplin Machine: Slapstick, Fordism and the Avant-Garde by Owen Hatherley
A Book Review by Tony Williams. Today, it has become a tedious commonplace to listen to erroneous fallacies such as Fukayama’s “The End of History” – to which one can reply, “whose ideologically written history?” Since that time of unquestioned neo-liberal hegemonic control, other issues have appeared, including dismissals of a challenging […]
Never Mean: Patton Oswalt’s Film Memoir, Silver Screen Fiend
April 12, 2016
A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. Many film lovers will enjoy Patton Oswalt’s new memoir, Silver Screen Fiend, mainly because he’s one of us. He and his friends – “sprocket fiends” all – when they’re not lurking in revival houses or art house cinemas, spend their times arguing in […]
The Visual Beauty of Marguerite
April 8, 2016
By Cleaver Patterson. At one point, about half way into Marguerite (2015), the drama by French writer/director Xavier Giannoli, singing teacher Atos Pezzini (Michel Fau) is trying, diplomatically, to describe his pupil Marguerite Dumont (Catherine Frot) to some of those who have assembled to hear her latest performance. Where Marguerite […]
Orlacs Hände: A Constant Dilemma
By Amy R. Handler. Reaching back to time’s beginnings, Orlacs Hände (1924) forever touched the future, but at what price? Robert Wiene’s cinematic interpretation of Maurice Renard’s Les Mains d’Orlac (1920), cannot be neatly labeled expressionist in spite of its creation near the end of Weimar’s expressionist movement. Certainly there […]
Saul Bass: Anatomy of Film Design by Jan-Christopher Horak
A Book Review by Tony Williams. The work of Saul Bass is familiar to those impressed by credit openings of The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Cowboy (1958), Bonjour Tristesse (1958) Vertigo (1958), Psycho, (1960) Walk on the Wild Side (1962), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Bunny Lake is Missing […]
Crimson Glory: The Hidden Depths of Dario Argento’s Deep Red
March 29, 2016
By Cleaver Patterson. Anyone taking it upon themselves to comment on a film by the master of the giallo thriller Dario Argento is, to some extent, staking their reputation as a critic and writer. No-one will ever get it one hundred per cent right. Aficionados of his work — of […]