Features
Monday, August 22 2011
The 100 Essential Directors Part 7: Kenji Mizoguchi to Satyajit Ray
Pushing boundaries seems to be the thread that ties the directors of our seventh day together. From Japanese innovators to Italian iconclasts and Polish provocateurs, the directors that fall between Kenji Mizoguchi and the man who was perhaps India's greatest visual storyteller, Satyajit Ray, all push the form in incredible, surprising ways.
Wednesday, January 12 2011
The Best Films of 2010
Among this year's winners include a fake documentary, a comedy about Jihad, a vampire story NOT dealing with tacky tween romance, a haunting hillbilly noir, and an elegant tale about clones. Not necessarily the usual cinematic suspects.
Monday, October 13 2008
Cinema Qua Non - Indispensable DVDs: Part 1
Day One - A trip back to the classic days of studio system Hollywood, complete with great musicals, amazing adventure yarns, and a couple of post-modern freak outs, just to keep things controversial and lively.
Friday, February 22 2008
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie, Jake
Chinatown remains a stalwart of '70s cinema. The uninspired follow-up 16 years later reminds one that, sometimes, a masterpiece needs to simply be left alone.
Wednesday, June 20 2007
Part 3: The Stellar '70s
When it comes to post-modern moviemaking, everyone stereotypes the Me Decade as the genre's defining moment. In this case -- as illustrated by the 10 films that represent it -- the categorization is more than accurate.
Columns
Tuesday, May 13 2008
The Demise of Horror Culture?
While the horror classics of 1968 may have indeed revitalized the genre, few today are aware of these movies' impact on the canon...if they acknowledge them at all.
Reviews
Wednesday, January 4 2012
A Couple, A Gangster and an Island: Roman Polanski's 'Cul-de-sac'
This is certainly not one of Roman Polanski's most essential works, but it's definitely one of his strangest.
Monday, October 3 2011
New York Film Festival 2011: 'Melancholia' + 'Carnage' + 'The Loneliest Planet'
New York Film Festival organizers have thankfully maintained the limited number of films on the Main Slate (21 this year), preserving NYFF’s identity as an “elite” festival.
Friday, February 26 2010
The Ghost Writer
As the ghostwriter makes his evaluation at the start of The Ghostwriter, you realize, unhappily, that this is the movie over-explaining itself.
Wednesday, November 18 2009
Chinatown (Centennial Collection)
Despite bringing film noir into the daylight and into color, this is among the darkest of Southern California tales.
Friday, August 14 2009
Repulsion
This is the culmination of two artists upping their personal antes to produce greatness, two burgeoning legends of cinema testing their seemingly-limitless powers.
Blogs
Friday, August 26 2011
So Polanski: 'Cul-de-sac'
For the famed filmmaker, this cul-de-sac is no dead end.
Friday, July 30 2010
Apparently, Polanski's Problems Aren't Just Off Screen: The Ghost Writer
The Ghost Writer limps along when it should really crackle, stumbling over aspects of its story that a bit of better plotting would probably remedy.
Friday, March 5 2010
'Ghost' is Minor Polanski at Best
Abandon hope all ye who enter here for you will not be seeing an unheralded masterpiece by one of film's final auteurs. While his name…
Friday, March 5 2010
'Ghost Writer': The Futility of Good Intentions
I'd heard an old LA story, about a vice squad officer on duty in Chinatown. He'd told his partner that the best thing to do…
Friday, March 5 2010
Roman Polanski's 'Ghost Writer': Two Viewpoints
As it slowly rolls out across the nation, PopMatters' film blog, Short Ends and Leader, has two competing reviews of Roman Polanski's latest, The Ghost…
