By Elias Savada. I was ready to give up on Spike Lee after suffering through Red Hook Summer, his 2012 scattershot meditation on the director’s beloved Brooklyn. Lo and behold, the joint man is back in fine iambic pentameter form with the latest adaptation of the ancient Greek dramedy Lysistrata by […]
Simple, Beautiful Perfection in Brooklyn
December 12, 2015
By Elias Savada. It’s interesting that novelist-screenwriter-producer Nick Hornby and director John Crowley previously have been best known in the world of cinema for their boyish works. Hornby wrote the charming novel About a Boy (1998), which became an award-winning comedy film in 2002 that introduced us to rising star […]
A Master and a Masterpiece: Hitchcock/Truffaut
December 11, 2015
By Robert K. Lightning. The historic 1962 interview of Alfred Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut (ironically tape recorded and photographed, but apparently unfilmed) that led to the publication of Truffaut’s landmark Hitchcock in 1966, is examined in Kent Jones’s fine new documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut. That the interview was a singular moment in […]
“Cause You’d Rather Live for the Thrill of it All” – A Wealthy Woman with a Hell of an Art Collection: Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict (2015)
December 9, 2015
By Jude Warne. “Her voice is full of money,” Jay Gatsby says of his love Daisy Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 masterwork. There is something in the aural quality of socialite speak that suggests the speaker holds a vague indifference toward whatever matter may be at hand, because its […]
Larry Cohen: The Stuff of Gods and Monsters (2015)
December 7, 2015
A Book Review by Tony Williams. Those fortunate enough to have met or interviewed Larry Cohen are always amazed by his detailed answers to questions as well as his unique knowledge of American cinema and history. Michael Doyle’s Bear Manor Press publication is the most detailed compilation of interview material […]
Room: Woman and the Domestic Household
December 7, 2015
By Christopher Sharrett. Lenny Abrahamson’s Room, adapted from a recent novel by Emma Donoghue, is a “true crime” thriller of important resonance. Its story concerns a now-common and atrocious crime: a woman is kidnapped by a rapist and kept prisoner, a permanent sex slave. Joy Newsome (Brie Larson) is locked […]
The Perils of Perfume: Stink! (2015)
By Jude Warne. Jon Whelan acted solely as a concerned parent when he chose to investigate why his daughter’s new pajamas, which he himself had purchased for her from the Tween clothing brand Justice, were the source of an unsettlingly foul order. The path that this three-year-long investigation led him […]
A Life Laid Bare: Tab Hunter Confidential
November 28, 2015
By Elias Savada. Producer-director-editor Jeffrey Schwarz – I Am Divine (2013), Vito (2011), Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (2007) – is back in original action form from his day job as the creator of electronic presskits and supplemental home digital content. He brings us Tab Hunter Confidential, a laid-back examination of the […]
Trumbo: Wit in the Face of Pathos
November 26, 2015
By Matthew Sorrento. Dalton Trumbo’s story is an ideal one to represent the golden age of Hollywood. A famed screenwriter with literary roots (as the winner of the National Book Award for Johnny Got His Gun, 1939) who worked successfully within the studio system for around a decade (late 30s to 40s), […]
Caustic Commentary on Millennials in Horror: The Case of The Funhouse Massacre
By Sotiris Petridis. The horror film usually incorporates social critiques within its filmic texts. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) has been described as a commentary on the post-Vietnam era, while the slasher film subgenre of the 1980s critiques this conservative period when the AIDS crisis was one of the main concerns […]