Review

A Book Review by Tony Williams. The name of Jimmy Edwards (1920-1988) may not be familiar to American audiences, let alone contemporary British ones, except for those tuning in to the “Talking Pictures” cable stations and others running archive film and television series that put many contemporary examples on broadcast […]

By Jeremy Carr. Embracing a road trip structure, which is always conducive to a film concerning self-reflective journeys of the soul, Eugene Jarecki’s The King takes as its meditative subject not just the meteoritic rise and catastrophic fall of Elvis Presley, but also the corresponding character of the United States, through […]

By Thomas Puhr. One may argue that the “feuding neighbors” subgenre is overdone, having been explored in films like John G. Avildsen’s Neighbors (1981), Danny DeVito’s Duplex (2003), and Nicholas Stoller’s Neighbors (2014) and Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016). This trend is not limited to movie theaters, either; nearly every […]

By Tony Williams. One can never have too much of a good thing and the successful works of The Archers defines this cinematically. After the long overdue recognition delivered to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger while they were still around to receive it, acclaim by a later generation of directors […]

A Book Review by Tony Williams. This book is an excellent addition to the Bear Manor Media repertoire. Written by an independent film historian as a tribute to a film he finds of exceptional value, the book’s subtitle could also be renamed “Everything You Need to Know about Cujo – […]

By Elias Savada. I’ve been told, at rare moments throughout my life, that I look just like someone else, other than my dad or a close cousin, of course. Usually, if shown a photograph of the other person, I would not see a resemblance at all. For Robert Shafran, Edward Galland, […]

By Gary M. Kramer. John Waters has achieved respectability (again). After 2016’s successful Criterion Collection release of Multiple Maniacs, the premier film snob’s publisher of classics on Blu-ray/DVD has now issued a new 4K digital restoration of his 16mm masterpiece, Female Trouble, from 1974. The original film’s grainy quality gains […]

By Elizabeth Toohey. Is the designer Vivienne Westwood anti-establishment or is she the establishment? Is she iconoclast or icon? More to the point, has her fashion been subversive, a form of resistance to English politics and culture, or has it been merely a commodification of the youthful punk rebellion of […]

By Jeremy Carr. Writer-director Víctor Erice can be forgiven if he speaks of El Sur (newly released by the Criterion Collection) with more than a tinge of regret. This 1983 feature, only his second from 1973 to today (his sparse filmography largely consists of shorts and documentaries), wasn’t just released in […]

A Book Review by Tony Williams. During and since the time of Welles’s Centenary, many fine books and articles have appeared re-evaluating the work of a director once popularly regarded as a failure since making Citizen Kane, for one reason or another. Over the past few decades a dedicated group […]