Filmmaker Alexandre Rockwell’s Everyday Surrealism
Three Alexandre Rockwell films, now on OVID.tv, depict everyday Surrealism and Expressionism quite unlike the usual dingy kitchen-sink realism about lost souls.
Michael Barrett
Michael Barrett works in a public library. For more than 20 years, he wrote a monthly video column in the San Antonio Express News stressing classic and foreign films. His national publications include Video Watchdog, Nostalgia Digest and Retro Cinema. He's also written scripts that still await their destiny.
Lon Chaney Didn’t Always Need Makeup to Menace Silent Film Viewers
‘Lon Chaney: Before the Thousand Faces, Vol. 2’ captures how he applied his darkly expressive visage, even without makeup, to menace silent film viewers.
The Delightful Frightful Odyssey of Costa-Gavras’ ‘Eden Is West’
Costa-Gavras’ little-seen humane masterpiece, Eden Is West is the rare film that could make its viewers into better people. Now, many can see it on OVID.tv.
‘The Silent Enemy’ Raises Issues of Native American Identity
The gorgeously shot 1930 ethnography, ‘The Silent Enemy’, depicts the life of an Ojibway tribe long before the advent of European explorers and settlers.
‘Licorice Pizza’ Pulls a Magic Eyes Trick on Entitled Idiots
Licorice Pizza is a gaudy parade of rich white privileged shits of the type Paul Thomas Anderson tends to focus on. They’re his people.
Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford Play ’60s Spy Hipsters, Baby
Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford camp up their too cool for school ’60s spy hipsters personas for Richard Donner and Jerry Lewis comedies Salt and Pepper and One More Time.
A Woman’s Work Is Finally Done in Siodmak’s ‘Time Out of Mind’
Robert Siodmak’s Time Out of Mind, based on the novel by first National Book Award winner, Rachel Field, mixes gothic, classical, and literary elements in an unappreciated film.
The Past Isn’t Past in Stanley Kwan’s Fantasy Drama ‘Rouge’
Stanley Kwan’s 1987 fantasy drama based in Hong Kong, Rouge, is part romance, part ghost story, part political fable, and all gorgeous.
In David Lean’s ‘Summertime’ Only the Dreaming Is Easy
David Lean’s Summertime emerged as Hollywood was negotiating how adultery could be handled. The tawdry subject became the province of only the classiest actors.
‘The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet’ and the Nerve-Wracking Nature of Nothingness in 1950s White America
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet impresses me not for its alleged blandness but for its ingenious minimalism, its meta-structure, and its nerve-wracking nature of nothingness.
Brazil, Exotic Music, and Big Green Women Star in ‘Love Slaves of the Amazons’
In the campy B movie, Love Slaves of the Amazons boys are killed at birth while girls become savage murderers. Who are we to judge their alternative lifestyle?
Film Noirs ‘The Guilty’ and ‘High Tide’ Have Strong Literary Roots
Crime stories by Cornell Woolrich, The Guilty, and Raoul Whitfield, High Tide, are masterfully adapted by director John Reinhardt in two restored film noirs.
