excerpted from “Passive Aggressive” editorial by Nick James, Sight & Sound, April 2010 Part of the critical orthodoxy I have complained about has been the dominance of Slow Cinema, that “varied strain of austere minimalist cinema that has thrived internationally over the past ten years”, as Jonathan Romney put it. “What’s at stake,” he wrote, […]
A few years back, much fuss – mostly deserved – was made over The Lives Of Others (“Das Leben der Anderen” 2006), and everybody saw it. (Perhaps because of the irresistable Austrian-ness of the tyro director’s handle — Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. Yes, I think that’s why.) The only pity was that the mob response […]
Oh come on, you look like you’re going to the dentist. Keep an open mind. You might even enjoy it. Yeah. Two hours of French people singing and dancing for no apparent reason. I think the world would be a better place if everyone sang and danced for no apparent reason. Just remember your part […]
When Gentlemen Broncos (Jared Hess, 2009) was on big screens last fall, New Yorker critic Richard Brody compared the Mormon film maker’s religious vision to that of Pasolini. (It strikes me that a less lofty point of comparison might be Kevin Smith – Clerks (1994), Dogma (1999) – whose sensibility similarly pairs an eternally adolescent […]
Following up on the Reed screed against the small screen, here’s fellow iconoclast Werner Herzog on the same subject.
One of the best films of last year is new on Criterion. Here’s a link to the original Soul Food post, and you can view a trailer (or order a copy) at Criterion. At Criterion you’ll also find an insightful Armond White essay that points up the spiritual inflection of the film. White is intrigued […]
Nice piece in the Wall Street Journal profiling the director of NYC’s Film Forum, currently the focus of a series at the Museum of Modern Art. Through Feb. 20, the Museum of Modern Art is marking the theater’s anniversary with “Karen Cooper Carte Blanche: 40 Years of Documentary Premieres at Film Forum.” MoMA senior curator […]
“I can understand somebody going to the movies because there’s nothing else to do, but when somebody really wants to go, and even walks fast so as to get there quicker, then it depresses hell out of me. Especially if I see millions of people standing in one of those long, terrible lines, all the […]
In 2004, 2005 and 2006, Arts & Faith polled its members and came up with a series of lists of 100 recommended “spiritually significant” films. After a four year hiatus, nominations are in progress for a 2010 edition of the A&F 100, so it seems high time to opinionate about which recent movies might be considered for the forthcoming list.