The second phase of Universal horror films that began with 1939’s Son of Frankenstein was even more prolific and successful than the first, although this did not come at a small price. For while the bulk of the horror films produced under the watchful eye of the two Carl Laemmles were high-budget affairs with the […]
One of the immediate effects of the takeover of Universal in 1936 was that the horror films which had become such an important part of the studio’s brand name were very abruptly cut off (no doubt, the cost and middling performance of Dracula’s Daughter aided in this decision somewhat). This bold executive decision lasted for […]
Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s perfect and nearly wordless picture book Where the Wild Things Are, the story of a little boy named Max (Max Records) who gets so fed up with his mom (Catherine Keener) and his life that he runs off to find a place where large and not […]
The final film I saw at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival was also among the best: a Rwanda docume- hey, come back! Seriously My Neighbor, My Killer is not what you’d think of when you hear the phrase “Rwanda documentary”, which already begs the question; being that you are more likely than not an […]
The impetus behind the Red Riding trilogy was an intriguing one: take author David Peace’s epic quartet of novels concerning institutional corruption in Yorkshire from the years 1974 to 1983, set against the backdrop of real-life crime; arbitrarily ignore the novel that takes place in 1977; divide directing duties for the three remaining films among […]
The story of Kore-Eda Hirokazu’s Air Doll at the Chicago Film Festival is a hectic one: announced even before the full schedule came out, if my memory serves, it’s three screenings sold well until some five days before the first one was scheduled, when it was found that the print wouldn’t arrive on time, and […]
The best film (to my eyes) of the current wave of Romanian films remains 12:08 East of Bucharest, the first feature by director Corneliu Porumboiu. A political satire at heart, it shares the aesthetic of glacially slow long takes that have defined that country’s art-house hits in the last five years with a sense of […]
I seem to remember somebody once saying something to the effect of, “The only sin an American can commit is to be unlucky”. It sounds sort of Fitzgeraldian, but I’m almost certain it’s not from Fitzgerald. Hell, maybe I made it up. Anyway, I pity poor Kerry Prior, who indeed committed no greater sin in […]
This is, I think, a nice opportunity to take stock. Alan J. Pakula directed three of the most significant films of the 1970s New Hollywood Cinema in his loosely-defined “paranoia trilogy”: Klute, The Parallax View, All the President’s Men. I have argued that Klute in particular is not just significant, but is one of the […]
I need to get this out of my system first: the English-language title of Nicolas Saada’s feature directorial debut, Spy(ies), is terribly unlovely and cumbersome, especially compared to the elegance of its native French form: Espion(s). I’m going to use the French title hereafter, and I hope that’s not going to be confusing for anybody. […]
Proof that certain Hollywood tendencies aren’t unique to Hollywood at all, the fine director of the perhaps overly-rewarded The Crime of Father Amaro has come out with his first feature in seven years, and it too is a fine thing. Indeed, the only thing that keeps Backyard from transcending “fine” and turning into “pretty good, […]
Advertised as a “fairy tale for grown-ups”, which isn’t precisely inaccurate, Who’s Afraid of the Wolf is the story of a little girl, Terezka (Dorota Dedková) who is a little bit too young, or at least much too Romantic, to figure out that there’s a difference between reality and her very well-developed fantasy world, in […]
