Good Thing Melvin Van Peebles Ignored All That Dumb-Ass Safe Advice
Melvin Van Peebles’ life and art are about breaking the rules, ignoring society’s “wise” advice, and following your heart.
Michael Barrett
‘This Is Francis X. Bushman’ Revives the Dapper Silent Film Star
Silent film star Francis X. Bushman of ‘Ben Hur’ fame overcomes the posthumous oblivion that claims most of the stars who built early cinema.
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’70s TV Horror/Mystery ‘Kolchak: The Night Stalker’ Keeps Crawling from Its Grave
Horror-mystery TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker has a sour take on society that hasn’t dated since the ’70s; hence, its eternal afterlife.
When Golden Age TV Films Screamed About Gender Roles
In these three restored Gothic films from Kino Lorber, gender roles and their social undertones feed into the template of paranoid thrillers.
Film-Noir ‘A Life at Stake’ Is a Saucy Little Potboiler
Restored noir ‘A Life at Stake’ sets viewers smack in the middle of the sleek, seamy, sweaty, paranoid underside of the American ’50s, and it’s a nice trip.
Classism Rolls Through Classic Film ‘A Place in the Sun’ Like a Noirish Fog
A lyrical ode to Hollywood beauties Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, the An American Tragedy-inspired A Place in the Sun casts a long noirish shadow.
Mohammad Rasoulof’s Brave and Brilliant ‘There Is No Evil’
The Iranian government does its best to support the ruling metaphor in Mohammad Rasoulof’s body of work: his country as a prison.
Character Actor Edward Everett Horton’s Silent Films Provoke Raucous Laughter
Edward Everett Horton, a comedic bean pole with a voice you know from cartoons, knew how to make silent film audiences laugh–loudly.
Robert Altman’s ‘Nashville’ Is a Many-Headed Musical-Political Animal
Robert Altman’s Nashville is sour and sympathetic, accurate and exaggerated, messy and beady-eyed, a sprawling canvas reminiscent of Bosch or Breugel.
Exposed: Kino Lorber’s Forbidden Fruit Series Parade a Bevy of Brazen Gender Roles
These Forbidden Fruit sexploitation films by Robert C. Dertano and Lillian Hunt function as snapshots of a moment in baggy-pants comedy and terpsichorean art.
Josef von Sternberg’s First Talkie Arrives Like a ‘Thunderbolt’
Is von Sternberg’s Thunderbolt the talkies’ first link between the iconography of the criminal underworld and jazz music?