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David SanjekFeatures
Getting Something OutClaude Chabrol is not only one of the most prolific of the New Wave filmmakers (over 50 films in nearly 50 years), but also committed to genre-based narrative. [22 December 2005] ThrillsHarold Lloyd was one of the most and successful silent film comedians. And yet, for today's audiences, he remains mostly unknown. In his day, however, Lloyd rivaled Chaplin and Keaton at the box office, making films for over 20 years. [16 May 2005] Monkey KingAs a filmmaker, Jerry Lewis reveled in the possibilities of widescreen cinematography, stereophonic sound, and audacious bursts of Technicolor. [7 December 2004] Farewell, Norton: Art Carney (1918-2003)May he greet his maker with the kind of epigrammatic simplicity with which Norton once addressed a golf ball, 'Hello ball.' [13 November 2003] A Brief Reign of TerrorAt a time when the English horror film was too often content to revel in exaggeration for its own sake, Gordon Hessler brought a measure of craft and intelligence to material that might otherwise have been hackneyed. [17 June 2003] Fate Wears a FedoraAs much as the cinema molded his worldview, Jean-Pierre Melville was a man of action, tested in the course of conflict like few individuals who have chosen to display violence on screen. [6 December 2002] Smile When You Say That: James Coburn (1928-2002)You had the feeling the man possessed an undeniable center of gravity that could allow him to prevail effortlessly in the midst of abject chaos. [29 November 2002] A Cynic’s Demise: Billy Wilder (1906-2002)To the movie maven, Billy Wilder was the last of his kind, the most visible link to the Golden Age of Hollywood . . . he epitomized the professional spit and polish that the factory system of the major studios promoted. [10 April 2002] Big Boss Man Samuel Arkoff (1917-2001)... time has shown that his commitment to entertainment and customer satisfaction led to a body of work that retains its appeal long after more supposedly sophisticated cinema has proven pale and pointless. [20 September 2001] Reviews
The Weeping Meadow (2004)Angelopoulos is a filmmaker who deserves to be seen on a large-scale theatre screen, but always, his work should be seen. [5 February 2007] 
À Double Tour (1959)À Double Tour is a visually engrossing if emotionally underwhelming thriller set in one the director's prototypically dysfunctional families. [5 January 2006] 
Teorema (1968)However much the camera lingers on Terrence Stamp's features or Silvana Mangano's heavily made up face, the characters remain corporeally opaque, more embodiments of ideas than urges and appetites. [10 November 2005] 
So Wrong They’re Right (1993) - PopMatters Film Review )However much one admires their chutzpah and the enthusiasm of their subjects, So Wrong They're Right proves to be more entertaining than edifying. [3 October 2005] 
Memories of Murder (2003)Memories of Murder not only brings a fresh perspective to the forensics subgenre, but also thoughtfully considers Korea's political framework. [13 September 2005] 
Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (2004)Jim White acts as tour guide in this film addressing the 'Southern obsession with the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane.' [15 July 2005] 
Bright Future (Akarui mirai) (2003)One of the most attractive aspects of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's style is his implicit trust in his audience's intelligence. [31 March 2005] 
Strangers When We Meet (1960/2005)Strangers When We Meet is a melodramatic tale of extramarital unhappiness amongst fast-track suburbanites. [23 March 2005] 
The Harvest (1993)David Marconi's screenplay is redeemed by its interest in messing with our minds rather than trotting out the requisite local color and visual shortcuts. [7 February 2005] 
The Naked Jungle (1954)What sets this Naked Jungle apart is a remarkably astute depiction of the collision of the sexes, in its addition of a mail order bride for the protagonist. [13 December 2004] 
SCTV Volume 2The material shows how much the SCTV crew did not engage in either obvious parody or simple knee-jerk laughs. [24 November 2004] 
The Grissom Gang (1971)Like his characters, Robert Aldrich went for broke, taking his audiences on a thrill ride that could be thoughtful and hair-raising at the same time. [8 November 2004] 
The White Dawn (1974)While the indigenous people mock their guests as the spawn of dogs, they nonetheless save them from death and offer them shelter. [5 October 2004] 
SCTV Network/90: Volume 1These were smart people who figured out a way to make sketch comedy work in a 90-minute format. [23 September 2004] 
The Flower of Evil (La Fleur Du Mal) (2003)Claude Chabrol keeps the forces that threaten to tear the family asunder, for the most part, submerged. [3 August 2004] 
Lord Love a Duck (1966)Lord Love a Duck illustrates, with corrosive wit, how the mindless pursuit of status will be the death of us all. [26 January 2004] 
The Edge of the World (1937)Michael Powell's work reveals the unshakable conviction that film should overwhelm the audience with an artist's deliberately crafted vision. [15 December 2003] 
Bonjour Tristesse (1958)Draws much of its visual and dramatic effectiveness from Preminger's intelligent use of the screen process of the 1950s, Cinemascope. [9 December 2003] 
The Marrying Kind (1952)Hollywood did not allow Holliday to display the full range of her talent and intelligence; most of her roles were variants of the 'dumb blonde'. [1 December 2003] 
Le Cercle Rouge (1970)It was one of Melville's most commercially successful features, which comes as little surprise considering the pedigree of its stars. 
The Man Who Laughs (1928)Director Paul Leni integrates German Expressionist techniques with the demands of the Hollywood system without compromising their effectiveness. [21 October 2003] 
Drôle de Drame (Drôle de drame ou L’étrange aventure de Docteur Molyneux) (1937)Marcel Carné acts like the perfect traffic cop, guiding his characters through one absurd coincidence after another. [14 October 2003] 
Il Posto / I Fidanzati (1961/1962)Like his subjects, Olmi lived through and went on to tell stories about the post-War Italian economic miracle. [7 October 2003] 
The Eye (2003)The influence of blood kin and the customs of religion act as a fulcrum to balance the influence of the supernatural. [26 June 2003] 
The Crazies (1973)For Romero, the monsters of our imagination always coexist with the products on the shelves at the Five & Dime. [23 June 2003] 
Fulltime Killer (2001)Willfully goes over the deep end, almost nihilistically wallowing in excess for excess's sake. [9 June 2003] 
My Life As a Dog (Mitt liv som hund) (1985)The best tales about growing up incorporate the anxieties of childhood. [28 May 2003] 
Pépé Le Moko (1937)Jean Gabin compels our attention as much through stillness as through visible exertion. [7 April 2003] 
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)Carpenter refuses to reduce the violence to a sideshow of blood squibs or special effects pyrotechnics. 
The Killers (1946)The line between victims and violators is almost erased, now that playing by the rules seems little more than an antiquated affectation. [2 April 2003] 
I See a Dark Stranger (1946)The wealth of detail about gay life at the time and the often adverse public perception of homosexual behavior ensures Victim's lasting fascination as a social document. [25 March 2003] 
It All Starts Today (Ca Commence Aujourd’hui) (2000)So physically vigorous is It All Starts Today that at times, it resembles an action picture staged before blackboards and on playgrounds. [30 January 2003] 
Sous Les Toits de Paris (1930)René Clair combined music and sound effects in addition to minimal dialogue, with a moving camera in order to involve the eye as well as the ear. [17 January 2003] 
Street of No Return (1989)Fuller never gave a bad interview, remaining throughout his career grandiose, garrulous, and gung-ho about moviemaking. 
Ready, Steady, Go! The Smashing Rise And Giddy Fall of Swinging London by Shawn LevyThe most successful amongst them possessed 'Face'. [11 December 2002] 
The Rocking Horse Winner (1950)The fascination of British filmmakers with the visually dynamic even occurs in films that seem concerned with quotidian subject matter. [10 December 2002] 
He Kills Coppers by Jake ArnottEvidence of America's persistent Anglophilia abounds. [6 November 2002] 
Cuba (1979/2002)The idea that an individual, like Robin Hood, could stand up for the rights of the oppressed comes across as a pleasant fantasy, worthy of song and legend, but devoid of the means to stand up against state power. [1 August 2002] 
Hell to Pay by George PelecanosPelecanos is a lifelong resident of the nation's capital who has observed gentrification erode whatever character or sense of continuity the environment once possessed. [17 July 2002] 
Real Genius (1985)Whereas most teen films collapse into a mindless sequence of witless one-liners and antiquated sight gags, Real Genius remains effervescent and engaging. [12 July 2002] 
Can’t Be Satisfied. The Life and Times of Muddy Waters by Robert GordonGordon brings to his subject a fan's admiration for the music without abandoning a historian's dedication to detail. His language is rich and evocative, particularly when he conjures up the sound of one of Muddy's most famous works. [27 June 2002] 
Blood Orchid. An Unnatural History of America by Charles BowdenThe balanced appreciation of our appetites that has consumed Charles Bowden for over 25 years has become an increasingly demanding enterprise. [22 May 2002] 
Movie Love in the Fifties by James HarveyHarvey wishes to illustrate how by appealing to and then upsetting the kinds of emotional allegiance audiences give to established cinematic conventions, a more complex and compelling kind of affection emerges, one drawn by oddity and extremity and not the tried and true. [13 May 2002] 
Grey Gardens / Salesman - PopMatters Film Review )What makes the Maysles' work special lies in how they manage, by focusing so intently on their subjects, to elicit a body of information that the audience is compelled to examine for its possible meaning. [11 April 2002] 
Where Dead Voices Gather by Nick ToschesNick Tosches's elegantly written and emotionally satisfying case for [elusive singer Emmett Miller] makes one think of American music in an altogether different manner. Tosches convinces us that hearing Miller and the expansiveness of his yodel redraws the landscape of our cultural environment. [1 January 1995] 
Ten Years of Terror. British Horror Films of the 1970s by Harvey Fenton and David FlintThe contributors examine the 133 pictures produced during the course of this decade with neither a jaundiced eye nor the kind of slavish affection for the gruesome that makes much of the writing on horror films juvenile in the extreme. 
Torching the Fink Books & Other Essays on Vernacular Culture by Archie Green[Archie Green] embodies the best kind of common sense; reading him, we are alerted, as if from deep slumber, to how labor and culture, the active and the contemplative life, are not divisible territories but part of a complex environment in which thought and action form an indissoluble whole. Archie is, if anything, a agitator of the human spirit. 
Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock and Psychedelics in the 1960s by Nick BromellListening to the music of the times permits one to remember, Bromell believes, the loneliness, the breakthroughs, the vertigo of radicalization, and the awareness of a fundamental instability that looked like ecstasy at one moment, like evil the next. 
Rock ‘Til You Drop: The Decline from Rebellion to Nostalgia by John StrausbaughThe author believes rock music to be necessarily an evanescent form of statement. 'Here today, gone later today' should be, he states, 'the motto of all rock bands. The shelf life of rock credibility is too short for it to be a lifetime career.'" 
Mainly About Lindsay Anderson by Gavin LambertWhile 'If' concludes with change wrought through the barrel of a gun, what lingers about the film is the breadth of Anderson's imagination and the passion with which he at the same time savages and memorializes the environment of his youth. 
A Massive Swelling. Celebrity Re-Examined As A Grotesque Crippling Disease by Cintra WilsonIf she [Wilson] acknowledged more often how the obsession with celebrity results from such systematic social inequities, 'A Massive Swelling' would be something other than an occasionally amusing but ultimately unsatisfying exercise in attitude. 
The Ghastly One. The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan by Jimmy McDonoughJimmy McDonough at one point describes Andy Milligan as 'one of those creatures who ride the midnight train, come from the land of the screaming skulls.' Even though we may not wish to take a journey on that vehicle or experience the territory from where it came, the ride is one I will not soon forget. 
The Vanishing (Spoorloos) (1988/2001) - PopMatters Film Review )The most skillful purveyors of horror and suspense narratives recognize one incontrovertible fact: we fear the banal. 
The Stunt Man (1980/2001)No matter how many times one watches ['The Stunt Man', it maintains] a kind of kamikaze bravado. 
Méliès The Magician / The Magic of Méliès (1997/2001) - PopMatters Film ReviewNo matter how hard he tried, Méliès could not put aside the role of conjurer. 
The Lady Eve / Sullivan’s Travels (1941/2001) - PopMatters Film Review )One gets the feeling that Preston Sturges shot his creative wad early on, then exhausted by fighting the suits' efforts to censor his work. 
Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (1922/2001) - PopMatters Film Review )Haxan is a documentary grounded in extensive research about the history of witches in Western culture. 
Hatari (1962/2001)['Hatari'] reminds us as well that, as David Thomson observes, Hawks is 'the greatest optimist the cinema has produced.' He delineates a world in which men and women, humans and animals, co-exist and achieve an enviable degree of harmony and serenity. 
Diamond Men (2001)As much as anything, what makes 'Diamond Men' well worth seeking out is Robert Forster's commanding performance as Eddie. 
Cutter’s Way (1981/2001)Passer expertly laces this compelling character study with all the intrigue and narrative complications familiar from classic 'film noir' of the 1940s and '50s. 
Chop Suey (2000)For Weber, Sir Wilfred Thesiger's craggy face holds as much wonder and wisdom as Peter Johnson's taut torso. 
Big Trouble in Little China (1986/2001)Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) is the anti-hunk, the inverse of the pectorally endowed fighting machines typified by Stallone and Schwarzenegger. |
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