Recent Film Columns

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Monday, February 16 2009

Biggie Gives Us One More Chance

By Quentin B. Huff

Biggie Smalls' mythology hasn't afforded him a dreamy endgame à la Tupac or Elvis. Nobody imagines Biggie pulling the ultimate Machiavellian coup by making the world believe he's dead while he's secretly chillin' in Jamaica.

(more Busted Headphones)

Friday, February 13 2009

Love Rated XOXO

By Jennifer Byrne

Could the lighthearted, seemingly innocuous genre of the romantic comedy actually be as psychologically damaging as onscreen violence and sex?

(more Pop Osmosis)

Thursday, February 12 2009

Two Lovers: All Your Choices Are Bad Ones

By Chris Barsanti

What James Gray bravely does in Two Lovers is return the idea of pain, and the threat of bad decisions, to the American film romance.

(more The Screener)

Monday, February 9 2009

Working in the Coal Mine and Singing About It, Too

By Juli Thanki

The majority of us aren't coal miners, we don't know coal miners, and we wouldn't last a week in a coal mine. Are coal mining songs, then, still relevant?

(more Torch & Twang)

Friday, February 6 2009

Conversing with Rudy Wurlitzer: ‘A Beaten-up Old Scribbler’

By Rodger Jacobs

My conversations with Rudy Wurlitzer were not unlike a road journey itself with plenty of unplanned side trips along the way.

(more Deconstruction Zone)

Thursday, February 5 2009

Taken: Daddy Tortures Best

By Chris Barsanti

Mill's towering righteousness is just too much for this weak little film, whose only interest is in affirming the white patriarchal prerogative.

(more The Screener)

Thursday, January 29 2009

A Perverted Perception of Movies

By Chris Barsanti

The success or failure of The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema hinges greatly on what one thinks of Slavoj Zizek's free-range associations on desire, blood, human waste, castration, and social control in films.

(more The Screener)

Monday, January 26 2009

No Girl So Sweet and ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’

By Matt Mazur

At first fearing a British Amelie, Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky surprisingly became Mazur’s favorite film of 2008.

(more Suffragette City)

Thursday, January 22 2009

On the End of Every Fork

By Chris Barsanti

Our Daily Bread is a 21st century naked lunch in the true sense of what Burroughs meant, not a scattershot impressionistic sensory assault, but an eye-opener that can actually change the way one views the world.

(more The Screener)

Ken Russell at the BBC

By Michael Barrett

Everything here is in achingly beautiful and sharply restored black and white, everything is intelligent and witty, everything is deeply felt -- everything is Russell.

(more Canon Fodder)

Friday, January 16 2009

Slumdog Millionaire: All Eyes East

By Chris Barsanti

Slumdog Millionaire's Golden Globe win for Best Motion Picture/Drama is like a flare warning Hollywood about its future in cinema.

(more The Screener)

Thursday, January 15 2009

Convergence Culture: the Many Faces of Hellboy

By Shaun Huston

Different media means different Hellboys. Mike Mignola's versus Guillermo del Toro's.

(more Worlds in Panels)

Thursday, January 8 2009

Guerrilla Patton

By Chris Barsanti

Soderbergh's supersized retelling of the Che Guevara legend is an uncomfortable mix of war procedural and unabashed hero worship; ingenious but flawed.

(more The Screener)

Wednesday, January 7 2009

Twilight Takeover

By Jennifer Makowsky

The film is a successful adaptation of the book not only because Pattinson is so talented and dreamy, but also because Hardwicke knows a thing or two about filming adolescents.

(more The Box Office Belletrist)

Tuesday, January 6 2009

Something to Do with Death

By Marco Lanzagorta

By manipulating mankind’s fear of death, organized religion clearly emerges as the most ruthless and totalitarian authority institution in the history of the world.

(more Dread Reckoning)

Thursday, December 18 2008

Exquisite Agony

By Chris Barsanti

This holiday season, Mickey Rourke (in The Wrestler) and Will Smith (Seven Pounds) suffer for all us sinners.

(more The Screener)

Thursday, December 11 2008

Shameful Exposure

By Chris Barsanti

A fiery Kate Winslet saves morality tale in 'The Reader' while a similarly powerful Meryl Streep can't do the same for the overly certain 'Doubt'.

(more The Screener)

Monday, December 8 2008

The Annihilating Feminine: Kate Winslet Gets Nasty in The Reader

By Matt Mazur

In Winslet’s clever, low-key performance, all of the character’s ambiguousness remains intact, making Hanna her most complicated, mature creation to date.

(more Suffragette City)

Thursday, December 4 2008

Frost/Nixon: An Interview with a Vampire

By Chris Barsanti

Frank Langella seethes and pulsates with cunning as the deposed president in 'Frost/Nixon', a far cry from the grinning cowboy executive Josh Brolin presented in 'W'.

(more The Screener)

Nary a Word: ‘The Last Laugh’ and ‘The General’

By Michael Barrett

The sound era added nothing thematically or tonally that wasn't already perfected in silent films.

(more Canon Fodder)

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