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 […]
Harry Dean Stanton: Finally, Sadly, Career-Topping in Lucky
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 […]
An Actor’s Life – Which One was David? by David Frankham with Jim Hollifield
September 26, 2017
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 […]
New York Plays Itself: Brian Tochterman’s The Dying City
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 […]
Life on Hold: Mike Leigh’s Meantime (Criterion Collection)
September 22, 2017
By Jeremy Carr. Based solely on his latest string of features – Happy-Go-Lucky (2008), Another Year (2010), Mr. Turner (2014) – one might reasonably assume all Mike Leigh films are mostly comical snippets of cockney quirkiness and bubbly English pleasantry. It doesn’t take much to see this hasn’t always been the […]
Culture, Style, Voice, Motion: The Sinophone Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien by Christopher Lupke
A Book Review by Yun-hua Chen. Christopher Lupke’s The Sinophone Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien: Culture, Style, Voice, and Motion (Cambria, 2016) is a well-informed book straddling between the disciplines of Chinese Studies and Film Studies and is highly relevant to film buffs, sinophiles, film researchers, and students. By contextualising Hou […]
All That’s Lost: Rebecca from the Criterion Collection
By Tony Williams. Criterion initially offered Rebecca (1940) on a 2-disc DVD edition in 2001 but following loss of copyright a few years later it became an expensive collector’s item, according to my colleague Chris Weedman. Now they have reissued this version in a new format retaining some of the […]
Love Kills: Sid & Nancy from the Criterion Collection
September 18, 2017
By Jeremy Carr. Sid & Nancy, Alex Cox’s 1986 biopic about raucous Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) and his equally rowdy girlfriend Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb), begins in the aftermath of days, weeks, months, and years spent under a range of influences. Pasty white and dazed, Sid sits limply […]
Stephen King’s IT: Unneeded Horrors
By Christopher Sharrett. I have never much admired the horror fiction of Stephen King, which I’ve called the “hoagie sandwich” approach to the genre, with numerous conventions, images, and devices of horror packed into each novel. Salem’s Lot has the Terrible House with its monstrous history, the serial killer/pedophile, the […]
The Sublime Beauty of Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg on Criterion
September 15, 2017
By Christopher Weedman. When celebrated French film director Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand were experiencing difficulty securing financing for Les parapluies de Cherbourg/The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), Italian producer Carlo Ponti remarked to Demy, “I really like your story. But you should shoot it in black and white, since color’s […]