Review

By Jake Rutkowski. There are few time capsules more compelling to me than works in which Golden Age Hollywood peels back the curtain on its own sordid affairs. What normally proceeds is melodrama in the throes of self-aggrandizement, tempered by winking metatext that points to the absurdity of it all. […]

By Elias Savada. The general belief that there is seemingly civil attitude toward one another in our planet’s clean, sterile looking future reflects the sci-fi genre’s long-standing notion that there is no clutter in our lives down the road. As seen in Realive, an existential look into life after death […]

By Louis J. Wasser. In the late 1940s, a man from New Hampshire named Albert Johnston, Jr. wrote a letter to film documentarian Louis de Rochemont. Johnston, in his early 20s, alluded to the book Lost Boundaries written by William L. White about his father, the elder Albert Johnston, a […]

By Tony Williams. Back in 1965 BBC TV screened a documentary introduced by Dirk Bogarde, The Epic that Never Was, an informative analysis of a 1937 failed film version of I, Claudius that would have been directed by Josef von Sternberg starring Charles Laughton in a role that would later be […]

By Elias Savada. The answer to whether smoking kills lies beneath the surface of this abstract but ultimately empty-plotted first feature from sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy, better known for having created the designer label Rodarte. The film, apparently inspired by the scenic American backdrop that infuses their fashion line, suffers […]

By Jeremy Carr. Francis Ford Coppola’s low-budget, low-key 1963 shocker, Dementia 13, was the first substantial step in the legendary filmmaker’s career. Like other Roger Corman produced features, it was shot on the cheap and in short order, and in most respects, it shows. Sufficiently atmospheric, with ample twists and enough […]

By Elias Savada. When I last visited Denis Villeneuve it was when I reviewed one of the best films of last year. Arrival was that perfect storm of a film from a masterful storyteller and technician…but I’ve since changed my mind about it. It is actually the best film of […]

By Elias Savada. Harry Dean Stanton was older than dirt when he died earlier this month. In human years, that was 91. I’m pretty sure if you placed him side by side with a mound of desert fill, they’d look the same. With an acting career that spanned 60 years […]

A Book Review by Tony Williams. The title of this review is not accidental. It is deliberately meant to evoke the title of that 1978 book by Charlton Heston, The Actor’s Life: Journals 1956-1976, but with the definite article changed to emphasize the fact that many actors, not all of […]

A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. In Thom Anderson’s documentary, Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), the history and culture of L.A. is narrated over film clips from other movies. For nearly three hours, this captivating documentary shows how Los Angeles, when it hasn’t “played itself” in the history of […]