This is one of a number of Channel 4-sponsored essay films by Petit, perhaps best known for his Wendersesque anti-road movie Radio On (1979). I'd been meaning to catch up with it for awhile, and...
2021-08-20 02:39:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Is this a controversial film among auteurists? I would assume that diehard Hitchcock fans would argue that Family Plot is appropriately valedictory, showing the old master in a much looser, play...
2021-08-19 18:33:54 +0000 UTC View Post
In accordance with the wishes of the ruly mob, I am asking you to select FOUR films below. (You could choose more, but we are on the honor system.) I will then view those four during the month of Septemb...
2021-08-14 18:26:28 +0000 UTC View PostHey, so the poll was nearly 3-to-1 in favor of choosing select films every month, instead of a single director. Cool.
Watch this space (or one very much like it) for a new film-laden poll. 😊
2021-08-13 18:10:04 +0000 UTC View Post
It's difficult to fairly evaluate Annette, because there's something glorious about the fact that it even exists. It's not just that brothers Ron and Russell Mael have tried and faile...
2021-08-13 17:10:39 +0000 UTC View Post
Through the courtesy of the revived cinephobe.tv website, I recently saw these two early Skolimowski films, his second and third features. What was most instructive to me is just how much more...
2021-08-11 03:43:03 +0000 UTC View Post
So this item randomly came up on a torrent site I frequent, and it occurred to me that I had never actually seen an Eric Schaeffer film. While this didn't exactly strike me as a major lack in my viewing ...
2021-08-09 22:24:34 +0000 UTC View Post
Should I continue selecting a Filmmaker of the Month? Or should I conduct a more MD'A-esque poll involving specific major films I've never seen? (In this case, I'd have you select four choices from a bro...
2021-08-09 03:32:25 +0000 UTC View Post
In his invaluable e-book A Mikio Naruse Companion, Dan Sallitt mentions that he does not consider When a Woman Ascends the Stairs to be a major work, and evinces a bit of confusion at t...
2021-08-07 22:22:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Last year I tried to watch Orphea and bailed after a scant 20 minutes. But recently, the Houston Cinema Arts Society selected the film for a one-week virtual run, which put it back on my radar. ...
2021-08-07 21:10:54 +0000 UTC View Post
The first fifteen minutes of Întregalde, the latest from Radu Muntean, are so stuffed with activity that it's difficult to even guess what the rest of the film might hold. We open in what looks...
2021-08-06 00:05:21 +0000 UTC View Post
I've just watched episodes one through three, and I detest this. Any reason I should continue? I mean, it's just going to be the same thing over and over and over and [APHEX TWIN] over and over ...
2021-08-02 02:54:15 +0000 UTC View Post(This one is mostly procedural. I know the outcome.)
Hey everyone, I have decided to use Our Beloved Month of August as a catch-up period. More specifically, I am going to watch one more film by each of the previous months' directors, rather than tackle a ...
2021-08-01 03:31:07 +0000 UTC View Post
I am beginning to think that Minnelli just isn't my guy. He's certainly a competent technician, and knows how to structurally organize a film with a lot of moving parts. His adaptation of James Jones' no...
2021-08-01 03:23:34 +0000 UTC View Post
[Embargoed. You are not reading this right now. It is an illusion.]
It was eleven years ago that Michelangelo Frammartino became a signficant new name on the festival scene with hi...
2021-07-30 04:15:43 +0000 UTC View Post
[This is EMBARGOED, just so's you know.]
Are you by chance one of those long-time Ferrara fans out there who hasn't really appreciated the director's recent turn toward classical h...
2021-07-28 04:03:34 +0000 UTC View Post
In deciding to catch up with some old Cannes titles, I've initially gone with some films that were severely lambasted at the time of their world premiere. It can often be instructive to see what sorts of...
2021-07-25 21:05:04 +0000 UTC View Post
As you all know, I am not on Twitter. But I check in with the site now and then, just to see if there are any under-the-radar news stories I might otherwise miss.
Right now, there's another "debate...
2021-07-23 17:40:30 +0000 UTC View Post
As a secret contrarian, nothing would delight me more than to say that Taurus slaps. Alas, slap it does not, although I also think that the harsh rejection it received in Cannes may have been ju...
2021-07-23 03:48:12 +0000 UTC View Post
Pig is an auspicious debut film, to put it mildly. First-timer Michael Sarnoski displays a remarkable control over tone and ambiance, which is all too rare in independent English-language films ...
2021-07-22 18:48:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey folks, what can I say? I have grown bored, with movies, with television, with food and drink, with life in general. So for now, I am suspending the Minnelli-fest to explore some older Cannes titles t...
2021-07-22 02:12:45 +0000 UTC View Post
Peter Tscherkassky's newest film world premiered in Cannes, his fourth appearance in the Quinzaine. Cannes is not particularly friendly to non-narrative and experimental film, to put it lightly, but Tsch...
2021-07-19 05:15:11 +0000 UTC View Post
Okay, now I'm starting to get it. Minnelli's direction here actually strikes me as a distant cousin to Hawks and Capra, in that he deftly manages a large, variegating ensemble, navigating between the mar...
2021-07-18 20:56:10 +0000 UTC View Post
Hong Sangsoo's two films from 2021 form an instructive if frustrating diptych. Where his most recent effort, In Front of Your Face, reduces some of the director's thematic moves to th...
2021-07-16 04:18:19 +0000 UTC View Post
