Having just recently turned 91 years old, Alain Resnais remains, with the Portuguese Manoel de Oliveira and the Hungarian Miklós Jancsó, one of the oldest yet most vital working filmmakers in the world. If he's undoubtedly aged in body, his recent output suggests youthfulness in ... Read More »
In recognition of the wider release of Noah Baumbach's new film, the Greta Gerwig-starring Frances Ha, I wanted to look at modern black & white films. Avowedly emulating the look of such Gordon Willis-shot Woody Allen works as Manhattan, Baumbach is in a long line of filmmakers w... Read More »
In recognition of the wider release of Noah Baumbach's new film, the Greta Gerwig-starring Frances Ha, I wanted to look at modern black & white films. Avowedly emulating the look of such Gordon Willis-shot Woody Allen works as Manhattan, Baumbach is in a long line of filmmakers w... Read More »
In honor of the home media release of The Impossible by Entertainment One on April 23rd, this is a special edition list of my Top Ten Survival Films. Survival in a cinematic context is inherently dramatic and exciting, whether a lone individual struggles against the forces of nat... Read More »
One of the great music movies of the 1990s also happens to be one of the decade's great comedies. Co-written by and based on the very dialogue-heavy debut novel by Roddy Doyle, The Commitments follows the creation and combustion of a soul band of working-class Irishmen and Irishw... Read More »
Reading our friends at Movie Mezzanine this week putting together their lists of favorite films from the 1990s got me to thinking about the genre contours of that decade. In the United States at least, the boom in independent filmmaking brought with it a self-conscious attitude, ... Read More »
Kon Ichikawa's bleak comedy Odd Obsession fades from black onto the head and shoulders of Tatsuya Nakadai, just beginning the most fruitful period of his wide-ranging career as a leading man for the likes of Masaki Kobayashi, Hiroshi Teshigahara, and Akira Kurosawa. His medical s... Read More »
The actor/writer/director Jûzô Itami, whose culturally introspective and richly satirical features of the 1980s and 1990s became international hits, would have turned 80 this May. His tightly focused and stylistically consistent filmography of ten films in thirteen years was a re... Read More »
I knew this one would never happen, but bear with me. Whit Stillman's films are lightly melancholy musical comedies, with the musicality emanating from his richly stylized dialogue when not actually in the form of a tune like "Love Train" from the end of Last of Days of Disco. Da... Read More »
Since we're in the last throes of Oscar fever following the nominations announcement, it's time to vent our frustrations! Last year around this time I listed my snubs of the 84th Academy Awards, and this year will be no different, including the caveats that I'll only choose reaso... Read More »
Quentin Tarantino's bifurcated paean to the high-octane, often low-budget and existential road movies of the 1970s works better on its own than as the second-half of the Grindhouse double-bill, but it nonetheless feels like a direct response to its unrepentantly macho, caffeinate... Read More »
