Tarantino’s films expose the Binx Bolling in us all, restless until we have a tidy border of cultural reference within which we can claim our stake. Most of his intricately scripted and arranged films are hardwired into the idea that his audience has nostalgic connections to all the bits of media history he is tossing out at us.
Sylvain Chomet, creator (director? conductor?) of Bellville Rendezvous has been at work on the animated production of an old Jacques Tati script. The /Film post from which the following stills were lifted goes on to say that: “He has also, so far, shown a complete lack of control in plotting and pacing. There’s no denying […]
Rosenbaum has been retro-posting reviews he wrote for the Monthly Film Bulletin in the 70’s on his website. Among these trips down memory lane is a dense review of Badlands that caught my eye on account of the way Rosenbaum’s descriptions become so lyrical: The stylistic familiarities, on the other hand, appear too quickly and […]
On the heels of Reed’s Metropolitan and Barcelona review comes a companion review by guest writer John Adair. Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco came out over a decade ago, but its directionless youth who overestimate themselves seem even more prescient today than they did in 1998. That Stillman avoids making his characters hateful […]
There is also an excellent article on Makhmalbaf’s life and cinema in the latest Cineaste. A highpoint of the essay is the way The Cyclist, which has long been one of my favorite films, is posed as a transitional film. Both formally and biographically, one can see Makhmalbaf caught between dialectics of past and present, […]
From among the most recent Cineaste offerings comes a review of a new collection of essays called Inventing Film Studies. In the review, Michael Sicinski loosely outlines debates about the history of film criticism as well as most of the essays in the collection. One of the most notable seems to be an essay by […]
Cycling image by image through the idea of things being revealed and unveiled, the dawn that sets the film in motion culminates in the eyes of Johan’s wife fluttering awake – her resurrection an event that is consistent with the film’s almost theological preoccupation with images slowly growing in clarity. It is also an event that makes a MacGuffin out Johan’s despair, an incarnation of the glimmering light that suffuses Reygadas’ natural cinematography.
Roy Anker has reviewed Reygadas’ Silent Light for Books and Culture. It features some nice descriptions of Reygadas’ overall effect: To see the world this way, as if through a pair of Vermeer-tinged eyeglasses, is, frankly, startling. Perhaps this is Reygadas’ foremost gift: his “eye,” his luminous apprehension of the physical world. Whether it be […]
David Dark (author of recently reviewed Sacredness of Questioning Everything) slapped up a clip from Vivre sa vie over at his blog Peer Pressure Is Forever. And it compelled me to do the same here: There is a very fine line between Godard the ad hoc blowhard intellectualese grammarian, and Godard the conjuror of incisively […]