Friday, January 8 2010
The Best DVDs of 2009
Let's face it, when the content inside is less than meaningful, how better to market your particular movie than with plenty of digital packaging bells and whistles. Many of our 2009 choices reflect this strategy. Others are great all by themselves.
Friday, November 6 2009
Eclipse Series 17: Nikkatsu Noir
These five films from the golden-era of the legendary Nikkatsu studio shows off the never-ending ways Japanese filmmakers were able to combine the best elements of pulp and epic Japanese storytelling.
Wednesday, October 14 2009
20 Questions: Anvil
Still riding high off of the success of their acclaimed documentary (and likely Oscar-nominee), the founders of Canada's famed metal trailblazers Anvil sit down to answer 20 Questions about family, weed, and a surprising love of Star Trek ...
Thursday, October 8 2009
Tim and Eric Awesome Show ... Interesting Job
Through absurd humour, this show relentlessly disparages the wholesale futility of masculine posturing, useless products, and mindless modern entertainment.
Sunday, August 30 2009
Californication’s Note-perfect Becca
Madeleine Martin reflects on a season of Californication that saw her character, Becca Moody, play an essential part in Hank’s slow transition to adulthood.
Wednesday, July 15 2009
A Glimpse of a Fast-changing China
‘Factory Girls’ and ‘The People's Republic of Capitalism’ give us a snapshot of the dramatic changes China is undergoing.
Friday, June 26 2009
The Futility of Truth or Reconciliation in Waltz with Bashir
Although it examines culpability and responsibility in service of truth and reconciliation, this film fails to address the structures of power, and arguably perpetuates the very atrocities that it sets out to condemn.
Monday, June 15 2009
20 Questions: Crayton Robey
The Boys in the Band defined a moment in LGBT history. Crayton Robey explores that history in Making the Boys, which debuted at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival.
Thursday, June 4 2009
Clint Eastwood: American Icon Collection
Again in the Eastwood oeuvre, a man who thinks he's in control, and especially around women, finds out he's not quite.
Wednesday, May 27 2009
La Grande Bouffe & Tales of Ordinary Madness
La Grande Bouffe and Tales of Ordinary Madness are products of a dark worldview. Neither offers solutions about how to improve a disintegrating society.
Thursday, May 21 2009
Forbidden Hollywood’s William Wellman: The Forgotten Man
The 1934 Production Code’s puritanical stance towards sexuality is often highlighted by contemporary historians, but it also held extremely reactionary political mandates that forbade movie representations of conflicts between capital and labor.
Thursday, May 14 2009
God as a Character: David Berman’s Journey Through Israel
Silver Jew follows David Berman with a camera during his first-ever trip to Israel in a documentary that covers not only the man and his music, but also his intensely personal spiritual journey.
Wednesday, May 6 2009
Who Needs an Oscar Anyway?: Mickey Rourke’s Homeboy
Dismissed as too depressing in 1988, Mickey Rourke's self-penned turn in Homeboy brings an aura of sorrow more nuanced and poetic than that of his celebrated performance in The Wrestler.
Tuesday, April 21 2009
Dirty Harry: Nothing Wrong with Shooting the Right People
The year Dirty Harry was released (1971) saw several demonstrations of angry cops questioning why criminals had very solid constitutional protections that often interfered with law enforcement work.
Wednesday, April 15 2009
M Squad: Clench-jawed and World-weary
Lee Marvin almost floats through his space, bending his graying hatchet-head forward on his tall lanky body, his loose limbs on the point of uncoiling into savagery when some mug pulls a rod or throws a punch. He's a dangerous gentleman.
Wednesday, April 8 2009
To Kill the Sunflower: An Interview with Cory McAbee
Space is a lonely town, but there's only room for one song-and-dance sheriff in these parts, and his name is Cory McAbee, writer and director of the new space-western musical Stingray Sam.
Thursday, April 2 2009
The Aesthetics of Absorption: Truffaut’s ‘The 400 Blows’
In Truffaut, the camera works not to keep the viewer out of the constructed reality of the film but rather to draw the viewer into the artifice, to make the viewer complicit in its feigned reality
Thursday, March 19 2009
An Auteur’s Touch of Evil
The auteur is dead, long live the auteur: Orson Welles and Touch of Evil, 50 years on.
Wednesday, March 11 2009
The Secret Policeman’s Balls
The seemingly smutty and initially baffling title is the collective moniker for a series of Amnesty International benefit concerts, held in London.
Monday, March 2 2009
John Cassavetes’ Faces: The Authenticity of Discomfort
The camera always gets too close in Cassavetes’ films. These aren’t close-ups; they are invasions of private space.
