Categories
October 27, 2021
Whose Side Of The Camera Are You On?
Nazi officers wore hats emblazoned with a big skull right in the center, and yet it never occurred to them that they might be on […]
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October 26, 2021
The Frog by Segundo de Chomón
The surrealists recognized that not all surrealist art needed to be made by a surrealist. As a group they laid claim to many artworks and […]
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October 26, 2021
The Thorny Matter of Coonskin
Ralph Bakshi’s 1975 film Coonskin presents its audience with so much racially charged, controversial and deliberately offensive material its impossible to formulate a response as […]
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October 26, 2021
Favorite Scenes №2: Rashomon
Akira Kurosawa made Rashomon in 1950. The world of Rashomon is a tense chess game played by three characters. The game is less about strategy and more […]
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October 26, 2021
The Bothersome Man: Bloody Hilarious
“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.” (Friedrich Nietzsche) Jens Lien’s 2006 film The […]
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October 26, 2021
Cafe Flesh: A Darkly Clairvoyant Trilogy
Stephen Sayadian and Mark S. Esposito chose not to have their names appear on screen as directors of this nightmare. Cafe Flesh takes place after the end […]
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October 26, 2021
Who Killed Captain Alex: Post-Modern, Post Colonial, Hip Hop, Cinema?
Who Killed Captain Alex was made by the ebullient Isaac Godfrey Geoffrey Nabwana in 2010. It was filmed in Kampala the capital of Uganda. The film […]
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October 26, 2021
Favorite Scenes №3: Casting JonBenet
Kitty Green made Casting JonBenet in 2017. It’s a documentary about documentaries. Using a variety of ingenious filmic devices Green repeatedly arranges and rearranges fact and fiction revealing […]
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October 26, 2021
Favorite Scenes №4: Spirited Away
Hayao Miyazaki released his anime film Spirited Away in 2001. The film is dense with layered meaning and steeped in traditional Japanese folk tales. Many of the […]
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October 25, 2021
Favorite Scenes №11: Moonlight
Barry Jenkins made Moonlight In 2016. In it, we witness a young man’s struggle to construct a male identity. In the first third of the film, we […]
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October 25, 2021
Favorite Scenes №9: Ran
In 1985 Akira Kurosawa finished his grand-scale opus, Ran. The film is his interpretation of Shakespeare’s King Lear. It is full of spectacular imagery, ornate […]
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October 25, 2021
Favorite Scenes №10: The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
Nathan Juran released his fantasy adventure extravaganza, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, in 1958. The movie provided Ray Harryhausen an opportunity to showcase the stop motion skills […]
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October 25, 2021
Do You See What I See: Interpreting 8 ½
In reading about Fellini’s 8 ½ I was surprised by the number of critics and reviewers who focused on the film as a depiction of what it is […]
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October 25, 2021
Revenge of Mechagodzilla: Thoughts on Kaiju Symbolism
The legacy of Godzilla began in 1954. The history of this still ongoing franchise has been divided into a variety of eras the first of which is […]
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October 25, 2021
Favorite Scenes №6: Tampopo
In 1985 Juzo Itami made a film about food called Tampopo. There is a central story about a woman learning how to make Ramen but […]
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October 25, 2021
Kung Fu Cock Fighter, NSFW or Anywhere
So what do you expect when you begin watching a movie called Kung Fu Cock Fighter? Either it is a film about a guy who teaches kung […]
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October 25, 2021
Favorite Scenes №7: A Streetcar Named Desire
A Streetcar Named Desire was the result of a confluence of great talent. Elia Kazan directed it for Warner Brothers in 1951. The screenplay was written […]
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October 25, 2021
Favorite Scenes №5: The White Ribbon
Austrian filmmaker, Michael Haneke, made The White Ribbon In 2009. It was his contribution to an age-old discussion, a paradox caused by our mortality. The fact that […]
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October 25, 2021
Omo Child: A Challenge for Multiculturalism
Currently, western culture embraces the tenets of multiculturalism. There is a desire to recognize all cultures and ideologies as worthy of respect and to see […]
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October 25, 2021
The Lives of Others
The first hour of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck ’s 2006 film The Lives of Others is masterful. The atmosphere is taut and cold. There is […]
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October 25, 2021
Favorite Scenes №8: The Witch
In 2015 Robert Eggers released his period, horror, film The Witch. As a whole, the film had its strengths and weaknesses, but the scene where […]
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October 25, 2021
Social Psychology In Mehrjui’s Gaav (The Cow)
The first two-thirds of Dariush Mehrjui’s film Gaav (The Cow) feel’s like a biblical parable. It is not predictable, but it feels like it’s going to be. […]
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October 24, 2021
Kiarostami’s Where Is The Friend’s House?
Jean-Luc Godard famously bragged “All I need to make a movie is a girl and a gun” but he was a pretentious asshole. All Abbas […]
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October 24, 2021
Favorite Scenes №12: Modern Times
In 1936 Charlie Chaplin released his silent film Modern Times, a treatise on humanity’s uneasy relationship to the industrial revolution and the ascendency of capitalism. Early […]
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