Monthly Archives: September 2012
Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984)
Before Mala Noche, before Sex, Lies, & Videotape, and far before Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, there was Stranger Than Paradise. And with Stranger Than Paradise, Jim Jarmusch emerged as one of the earliest and one of the greatest voices of American independent cinema. Stranger Than Paradise has somewhere around 70 scenes, all of them […]
Simon of the Desert (Luis Buñuel, 1965)
Simon of the Desert is the final entry in an unofficial trilogy of 1960s films in which Luis Buñuel, with the help of Silvio Panal and Claudio Brook (who, respectively, play Satan and the titular saint) and producer Gustavo Alatriste, takes aim at religion and the culture surrounding it. The first, Viridiana (1961), was so […]
The “Exciting News” is Here
As those of you who frequent Indiewire (and if you don’t, you should) may already know, I was one of eight people selected as part of the New York Film Festival’s Critics Academy. I’ll be working with Indiewire and the Film Society of Lincoln Center to pitch stories, attend, and engage with the New York […]
The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)
I reviewed this one for No Ripcord, so click-through, please: EDIT: Earlier this post did not have an option to click-through and the link didn’t work. My apologies.
Exciting News in the Near Future
I can’t say what just yet, but I’ll let everyone know by the end of the week. It will explain the recent inactivity here. In the mean time, my review of the The Master should be going live over at No Ripcord pretty soon. When it does, I’ll link it. Anyway, recent class viewings include […]
Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, 1955)
Smiles of a Summer Night is an Ingmar Bergman film, but you could be quite familiar with the director and still mistake it for an adaptation of a Shakespearian comedy. The late 1800s setting may tip off the viewer, but there are four pairs of mismatched, adulteress lovers trying desperately to love someone that they […]
Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
Drama is low, and yet emotion is quite high. How is that possible? It’s all in the name. Close-Up is such an intimate look at what motivated Hossain Sabzien (playing himself) to impersonate the famous Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. As the title says, the film gets very close, and we get to know this man […]
Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)
There is no filmmaker quite like Abbas Kiarostami, who, after being hailed as perhaps the most important director, captured a Palme d’Or in 1997 with Taste of Cherry. His minimalist style, uncertain place on the spectrum of fiction and documentary, and intense demands of his audience are almost countered by his focus on natural landscape […]
August Capsule Reviews
I decided to get these out there while working on the other reviews. The Turin Horse could still surface in full-length, but no promises. If The Red Shoes, Solaris, and Andrei Rublev don’t get full-lengths, I’ll do a second edition of capsules. Anyway, here are the films I saw in August that I did not […]
Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus, 1959)
Oh, to attend Carnival. 53 years after release, Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus, which won the Palme d’Or, Foreign Language Film Oscar, and Foreign Film Golden Globe, evokes that longing, as it serves mostly to glamorize the Brazilian festival and the costumes, music, and partying that go with it. If it were an advertisement, it would […]
Forrest In Focus: Critical Film Reviews 