As a fan of master filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, I’m naturally eager to see the new documentary Room 237 currently making the rounds on the festival circuit, and thus not readily available for review. Instead, I thought I’d look at some of the doc’s source material, and what I found was a troubling, fascinating document that in its […]
Seen at the time as a return to form for Woody Allen—never mind that prior to this movie he’d gotten wonderful reviews and Academy Award nominations for Broadway Danny Rose and The Purple Rose of Cairo (two of his best, incidentally)—Hannah and Her Sisters garnered as much commercial and Oscar acclaim as his prior, late 70s […]
RED HOOK SUMMER (2012) A Spike Lee Joint Dir: Spike Lee Scr: Spike Lee & James McBride A quasi-sequel to the director’s accomplished Do The Right Thing, one of 1989’s most controversial and memorable films, Spike Lee’s independent Red Hook Summer unfortunately conveys little of the narrative drive and heat of the prior film.
REVIEW (blu-ray): HEAVEN’S GATE (1980) Dir-Scr: Michael Cimino A United Artists Release An indelibly maligned and misunderstood masterwork of New Hollywood cinema, Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (that’s the title in big letters on the spine and cover) has received a November, 2011, blu-ray restoration and critical reprieve courtesy the ever reliable Criterion Collection, and it’s […]
DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012) Dir-Scr: Quentin Tarantino A Weinstein Company Release A malformed pastiche comprised of equal parts loving movie homage and barbarous, bloody commentary on the dark violence in the American past and sometimes present, movie geek hero Quentin Tarantino’s latest work is a piece of flawed cinematic art that nonetheless demands attention and critical scrutiny.
In stark contrast to Psycho, the making of which inspired both a book and this feature film adaptation, Sasha Gervasi’s Hitchcock provides breezy, bright, and brief glimpses into Hitch’s marriage and voyeuristic relationship with the young women he sought to shape into his personal vision of feminine beauty, actresses he wished to keep close at hand […]
ANTICHRIST (dir-scr. Lars Von Trier, 2009) Dutch provocateur Lars Von Trier’s ANTICHRIST is a mature work of art from a filmmaker, by his own admission, in the bleak throes of major depression, one who has produced a motion picture to be reckoned with, albeit one destined to be perceived as perhaps profoundly silly as well […]
