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Michael BueningFeatures
The 47th Annual New York Film FestivalThere were plenty of films in the New York Film Festival that captured similar redemptive moments and there is nothing esoteric, depressing or arduous about that. [25 October 2009] Personal Epics: The 46th Annual New York Film FestivalShafted by the current events taking place outside its theaters, the New York Film Festival was agreeably low-key this year, demonstrating that art, at its best, can serve as valuable provocation when we try to make sense of a bewildering world. [7 November 2008] High and Low: Film Forum Presents: NakadaiNew York’s Film Forum offers an ambitious and inspired film series this summer, dedicated to the films of Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai. The series is as entertaining, provocative, and intricate as its subject. [27 June 2008] The Grand Tension of Peter WatkinsPeter Watkins is a stubborn, one-man army, relentlessly pushing the film medium in a direction that is more challenging, productive, and involving. [28 February 2008] Spirited Away: The 45th Annual New York Film Festival - Part TwoThematically, this year's New York Film Festival was strong on sophisticated explorations of religion and spirituality. Stylistically, many films eschewed intricate plotting for evocative visuals. [15 October 2007] Family Dramas: The 45th Annual New York Film Festival, Part 1The most noticeable feature of this year's New York Film Festival is the preponderance of American pictures. [4 October 2007] BAMcinématek Presents: Best of 2006: Just on the EdgeBAMcinématek’s Best of 2006 series served as a corrective to the clutter of year-end-best film selections, highlighting the unrecognized or undistributed. [8 May 2007] Cinema Cuba LibreThe primary goal of The Cuban Masterworks Collection seems to correspond with Engel's call "to break down the reluctance of non-Cuban audiences to look at their films at all, and to make them look without prejudice." [19 March 2007] Legendary Weapons of Hong KongWhen their films bog down in plot contrivances, Chor and Chang share a baroque leadenness. By contrast, Chia-Liang offers nimble entertainments. [29 January 2007] A Guide to the Lesser Woody Allen FilmsThe Film Forum has programmed a full-scale Woody Allen retrospective titled "Essentially Woody" featuring all the movies you've already seen. So, Buening provides a brief guide to all the Woody Allen films you didn't know existed. [21 December 2006] Legendary Weapons of Hong KongRoaming North America like David Carradine, delivering kung fu and gravity-resistant swordfights, UCLA's second entry in its outstanding "Shaw Brothers' Heroic Grace" series brought its Iron Fist technique to New York's BAMcinématek. [19 December 2006] Lore of the Worlds: The 44th New York Film Festival - Part 2Unlike the British and American selections, which steered towards art house dramas, the program's global films covered monster movies, action, gangster, melodrama, and surreal comedies. [23 October 2006] The Privileged Few: The 44th New York Film Festival - Part OneThe New York Film Festival is a shamelessly elitist institution. But in an increasingly overstuffed festival schedule, it's nice to have a line-up devoted to high artistic standards. [16 October 2006] Beautiful FreaksFrequently presenting people living cruel and impossible lives, Lech Kowalski's films observe in detail how they navigate their existence, successfully or not. [10 October 2006] Tribeca Film Festival, Week 2: Saturation PointMy mother was right. During the second week of the Tribeca Film Festival, I discovered a medical condition where the sufferer feels his brain rotting away from staring at a screen for hours on end. [10 May 2006] Tribeca Film Festival, Week 1: Too Much of a Good Thing?In four short years, the Tribeca Film Festival has elbowed its way into an already overcrowded festival marketplace to become a beloved New York. This is largely due to a diverse line-up that's sure to please most everybody and a relaxed, community-centered vibe that includes concerts and family-oriented events. [1 May 2006] So Messed Up: BAMcinématek Presents: Some Kind of Horror Show (6-30 March 2006)BAMcinématek's 'Some Kind of Horror Show' was as twisted, unpretentious, and viscerally exhilarating as the genre it celebrated. [7 April 2006] This Was the Writing Staff That IsApparently, what The Daily Show writers really want to do is direct. This much is on display in the IFC Center's weeklong series of shorts by Jon Stewart's gagmen and women. [28 September 2005] BAMcinématek Presents: “A New World: Shirley Clarke” (1-4 August 2005)The BAM series, a testament to Shirley Clarke's eclectic tastes, talents, and influences, also seemed incomplete, the record of a career stifled by circumstances. [26 August 2005] Geeks Globally Act Locally: Otaku Cinema Slam! (4 March-27 May 2005)The basic generic reference points for Otaku Cinema Slam! are accessible to Western viewers, but the cultural particulars may not be clear. [21 June 2005] Its Own Mechanism: Before and After, Jean-Luc GodarFew filmmakers have sought so relentlessly to break down our concepts of projected images and words. [6 May 2005] The Early Sturges: Preston Sturges Screenplays, 1930-1939Preston Sturges painted an America as out-of-control jalopy full of fast-talking cons, greedy rubes, snappy girls, and exasperated fat cats with cockeyed intentions. [8 April 2005] Reviews
Big Machine by Victor LaValleVictor LaValle’s second novel is a Da Vinci Code for fans of Haruki Murakami and Chappelle’s Show. [24 September 2009] 
I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival EverettBy saying Not is not Sidney Poitier, the reader is tempted to compare him to Sidney Poitier just as the characters do, when the author is pointedly saying that we shouldn’t. [23 July 2009] 
The Chris Farley Show by Tom Farley & Tanner ColbyA complex community of personalities radiates around the main subject and a detailed, varied portrait inevitably appears. [16 July 2009] 
Petersburg by Andrei BelyAlthough not without playful satire, this masterpiece is a very pessimistic portrait of personal and societal evisceration. [13 July 2009] 
Please Step Back by Ben GreenmanIt’s maddening to see addiction for the way it turns a person into the one-dimensional cliché familiar from a hundred After School Specials and Behind the Musics. [28 May 2009] 
In the Realm of the SensesNow may be an excellent time to reappraise this period in film history, the shock of sex worn off, and its artistic aims put into clearer long-term context. [20 May 2009] 
The Way Through Doors by Jesse BallThis is an attempt to mimic the way we tell and think about stories and how this relates to the haphazard workings of our mind and how we try to make sense of the world through our scrambled thoughts. [4 May 2009] 
Still LifeA blend of pop, folk, painting, and documentary resulting in a sprawling yet finely detailed portrait of a society suffering from profound psychic discord. [19 February 2009] 
10 Years of Rialto Pictures: 10 Discs Box SetThough primarily western, Rialto represents the high standards of the art house scene in storytelling, formal and technological adventurism, and intellectual stridency. [5 February 2009] 
Holiday InnBing Crosby! Fred Astaire! Irving Berlin! Holiday Inn is due for a little popular revival. [13 November 2008] 
Global Bollywood by Anandam Kavoori and Aswin Punathambekar, EditorsWhat is Bollywood all about? And why did the multiplex near my hometown, in a field on the outer suburban ring of Chicago, reserve one theater just for Bollywood movies? [17 October 2008] 
Federico Fellini The Book of Dreams by Federico FelliniDid Fellini dream more extravagantly, with better art direction and more fluid crane shots than you or I? [25 July 2008] 
City Between Worlds by Leo Ou-fan LeeLee balances probing intellectual analysis, fierce criticism, and gentle warmth, all imbued with the frustrated love any city dweller will immediately recognize as the elusive grasp to define where one lives. [20 June 2008] 
Eclipse Series 8: Lubitsch MusicalsThe pre-Hays Code sexual innuendos of these films capture a side of the musical rarely seen in classical Hollywood films, of guilt-free dalliances and blatantly carnal wordplay in the style of Cole Porter. [23 April 2008] 
Mr. WarmthA film on "the poster child for rabies" that left me wanting to understand this man. [19 February 2008] The Moment of TruthNothing about this series could be called "unexpected," coming as it does, from a corporation that perennially tempers its conservatism with the maturity and restraint of an eight-year-old. [30 January 2008] 
Missionary ManWhatever cheesy joy is contained in the story is smothered by the funereal air that hangs over the telling. [28 January 2008] 
The Rough Guide to Film by Richard ArmstrongUnlike many guides which limit themselves to DVD or video releases, the writers say "our film selections have not been dictated by availability". [10 January 2008] 
Roses in DecemberThough crackled and dated, this documentary is a sobering, cautionary tale for the festering humanitarian crises of our times. [9 January 2008] 
Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s by Geoffrey Nowell-SmithOn censorship he says: "It tended to be assumed in European films that human beings were born with sexual organs and at a certain point in their lives began to use them, not always in socially approved ways." [4 January 2008] 
Extras: The Complete Second SeasonExtras is filled with celebrity cameos, pratfalls, bawdy jokes, shameless mugging, and larger than life idiots. [28 November 2007] 
Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts by Clive JamesAt times his assumption of equal intelligence with the reader is flattering and laughable. [13 November 2007] 
CommuneCommune's most irritating habit is to render quaint the complicated elements of the commune’s history, while leaving the most dramatic issues unexplored. [31 October 2007] 
Mingering Mike: The Amazing Career of an Imaginary Soul Superstar by Dori HadarMingering Mike is a fitting homage to its subject’s ambition and creativity. These images are bursting but fragile, full of meaning and utterly inconsequential, nothing but promise. [25 September 2007] 
Cria CuervosThree generations, each imitating the sins of the others, await freedom in the declining years of Franco’s Spain. [21 September 2007] 
Great World of SoundGreat World of Sound portrays America as fragile and fractured, held together by flimsy notions of patriotism, celebrity, and can-do capitalism. [14 September 2007] 
Eclipse Series 4 - Raymond BernardThis is blockbuster filmmaking of the most skillful and impressive sort from a keen visual stylist. 
Les Enfants TerriblesA partnership between the tough suspense artist Jean- Pierre Melville and the precocious Jean Cocteau might look odd, but the tensions and conflicts served the twisted, mythic world of Les Enfants Terribles rather nicely. [7 September 2007] 
If . . . (1968)Watching If…. today, it still fails to provide any sort of answer for how tradition and change can be reconciled. [13 July 2007] 
Reno 911! - Miami (2007)Rather than continue to play off their stock traits, the writers and cast of Reno 911!: Miami should have used the new locale to reveal deeper abysses of their ineptitude and richer shadings of their hypocrisies. [9 July 2007] 
Sansho the BailiffDespite his dissatisfaction, that so much of the film works magnificently is evidence of Mizoguchi 's hard driving perfectionism. [3 July 2007] Promising Developments: The Sixth Annual Tribeca Film FestivalThe strongest films I saw came from overseas: Jia Zhang-ke’s Still Life, Shane Meadows’ This is England, David Volach’s My Father My Lord, and Li Yu’s Lost in Beijing. [15 May 2007] 
Essential Classics - American Musicals (1945)This is a conformist America as it was defining itself in the mid 20th century, a young superpower looking backwards for grounding. The characters are brash and loud and charismatic. [27 April 2007] 
The Burmese Harp (Biruma no tategoto) (1956)The film's awareness lies behind much of the action, to give it a gravity and power that offers hope without denying the potentially hopeless psychological brutality of war. [17 April 2007] 
Peter Pan (2-Disc Platinum Edition) (1953)Peter Pan draws an unforgiving line between pure, dreamy childhood and boring, compromising adulthood. [6 April 2007] 
The Naked City (1948)This film's repetitive structures, meticulous legwork, and melting pot locations would become a staple of television crime-solvers. [2 April 2007] 
Shogun Assassin 2: Lightning Swords of Death (1972)The hectic episodic structure of this film creates the sense of a suffocating existential slaughter without beginning or end. [13 March 2007] 
Council of the Gods (Der Rat Der Götter) (1950)Cautionary tales like Rotation and Council of the Gods sought to examine, rather than preach on, the sacrifices made and crimes committed during war. [9 March 2007] 
Avenue Montaigne (Fauteuils dorchestre) (2006)Danièle Thompson's Avenue Montaigne is a paean to Paris, love, and the invigorating power of art. [16 February 2007] 
Johan Van der Keuken: The Complete Collection, Vol. 1 (2006)Throughout this collection Van der Keuken always returns to the instincts of “the lonely, wandering eye” of his youth, documenting the individual in daily drudgery, looking for the subtle revelations of the unguarded moment. [25 January 2007] 
Empires: NapoleonThis is a thorough yet standard PBS documentary, an excellent primer and learning tool. [1 December 2006] 
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)That a down home jamboree could be interesting to heavy-metal loving middle school students speaks to its wide. [16 October 2006] 
Ghost of Mae Nak (2005)This is a modern, but alas, substandard, interpretation of an enduring classic horror story. [11 October 2006] Keeping Mum (2005)The most enjoyable portions of the film mock Mary Poppins-style children's literature, whereby a goodhearted but lost family is set aright by a no-nonsense nanny. [15 September 2006] 
Water (2005)Water is excellent enough on its own and well worth seeing, but an opportunity to further explore issues of societal oppression, especially surrounding the making of this film, was missed. [14 September 2006] Cemetery Man (1993)Cemetery Man takes the inherent silliness of walking rotting corpses and adds the existential nightmare of a hero who can't tell the difference between the living and the dead. [16 August 2006] 
Oh! Calcutta!Chalk it up to the same societal impulse that produced such it-sounded-good-at-the time pop cultural ephemera as "The Macarena" and bicycle shorts. [10 August 2006] 
The Wild Wild West: The Complete First SeasonConstructed on a base of likeable characters, the tenor of The Wild Wild West changed from episode to episode, as directors and writers interpreted the world as they wish. [5 June 2006] 
Days of Heaven (1978)Terrence Malick's 1978 film leaves you with the ache of paradise briefly felt and then remembered. [18 April 2006] 
Kill the Moonlight (1994)It's California in the early '90s on an outskirt north of Los Angeles dominated by decrepit strip malls, pawnshops, taco stands, and dirty coke dealers. [6 April 2006] 
Stalag 17: Special Collector’s Edition (1952)This is a Billy Wilder movie, so there's a darker side to the shenanigans, but it's also a post-war Hollywood blockbuster. [5 April 2006] 
American InventorMaybe George Foreman and Suzanne Sommers are the engine that drives our economy and what this country needs is another Big Mouth Billy Bass to shake us out of doldrums. [23 March 2006] 
Coney IslandConey Island deals with the darkness beneath the parks' bright surfaces with discretion, resisting the urge to play every clown image for maximum Carnival of the Soul eeriness. [22 March 2006] 
The Andy Griffith Show: The Complete Fifth SeasonThe very concept of change was anathema to Mayberry, and the beginning of Season Five delivered a grim portent: Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors) was replaced by his brother Goober (George Lindsey). [21 March 2006] 
Duck Season (Temporada de Patos) (2004)The kids are not infused with precocious cynicism or degeneracy. They are optimistic, as befits their age. [10 March 2006] 
Ultimate Bull RidingThe disc opens with a montage titled 'Hitting the Dirt.' It could also be called 'Hitting the Horns,' 'Hitting the Rodeo Clown,' and 'Getting the Head Stuck Between the Starting Chute Bars While the Hand Stays Attached to a Crazed Animal.' [31 January 2006] 
The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)The Spirit of the Beehive is about a child overcoming wonder. [27 January 2006] 
Skating with CelebritiesFollow Todd's lead, and let figure skating's sequin-spangled freak flag fly. [23 January 2006] 
Thérèse Raquin (1953)The movie opens and closes with the same overhead shot of Lyons. Carné, like Zola, emphasizes the ordinary tragedy of desperate city folk. [18 January 2006] 
RomeIf there is a civics lesson to be gleaned from Rome, it is to beware the passions inflamed by a government in the midst of an identity crisis. [28 November 2005] 
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944)Far from being a sermon, the movie is no bromide against girlish promiscuity, but a mature consideration of love found through 'unconventional' means. [7 November 2005] 
The Crusades: Crescent & The CrossWhen a battle reaches its peak, this documentary's melange of visual and aural resources -- scholarly commentary, digital animation-assisted recreations, maps, and a commentator illustrating the movements at present ruins -- reaches a fever pitch. [3 November 2005] 
Where the Truth Lies (2005)In a mystery titled Where the Truth Lies, solving the case is not going to be easy. [14 October 2005] 
Everybody Hates ChrisThe brilliantly constructed and deceptively complex pilot succeeds by not trying to force an awkward story over the exposition required of a premiere episode. [22 September 2005] 
At Last the 1948 ShowDespite a deft mixture of traditional polish and youthful verve, At Last the 1948 Show doesn't quite cross the line from good to great. 
The Dick Cavett Show: Rock IconsFor classic rock fans, the set contains some fascinating moments, and it's a testament to Cavett's willingness to play with format that they don't seem dated. [26 August 2005] 
Fruit of Paradise (1970)Chytilová starts by asking an interesting question: isn't it rational to eat from the tree of knowledge?" [9 August 2005] 
The Naked Truth / Never Let Go (1958/1960)Peter Sellers creates a calm-before-the-storm tension between this persona and later violent outbursts. [5 August 2005] 
Situation: ComedySituation: Comedy is a reality show where NBC producers break the fourth wall, turn to us half-wit boobs and ask, 'Got any ideas?' [26 July 2005] 
The Bob Newhart Show: The Complete First SeasonThe Bob Newhart Show manages to rise above generic formulas. [8 June 2005] 
Groucho: A Life in Revue (2001)I knew what a Groucho Marx impression was before I knew who Groucho Marx was. [5 May 2005] 
Full Frame Documentary Shorts Vol. 3 (2004)For viewers, it's a chance to see works by emerging filmmakers in easily digestible, small chunks. [26 April 2005] 
Prisoner of Paradise (2003) - PopMatters Film Review )Prisoner of Paradise is a fitting rebuke to Life is Beautiful. Entertainment is a diversion, not a survival strategy. [14 April 2005] 
A Current AffairThe Current Affair universe swings between poles of outrageous horror and humor. [4 April 2005] 
Showbiz TonightShowbiz Tonight covers less ground in an hour than Extra does in five minutes. [28 March 2005] 
Project Greenlight 3The drama that erupts when these high-profile overachievers are put in the same room is far more entertaining than the movies they produce. 
Making the Band 3Forced into an argument, Diddy's eyes light up, revealing again the all-consuming drive of Puff Daddy. [21 March 2005] BlogsConsuming Consumables: Eclipse Series 4 - Raymond Bernard [$39.95] [16 December 2007] |
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