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For a filmmaker who has fashioned a career out of dissecting the savage torpor of modern existence, Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon comes as something of an oddity. A story of strange occurrences in a tiny German hamlet on the eve of WWI, the film carries with it a bundle of [...]

Remake is a dirty word. For me it conjures images of Adam Sandler jabbering his way into a Gary Cooper role (Mr. Deeds [2002] and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town [1936]), Gwyneth Paltrow as Grace Kelly (A Perfect Murder [1998] and Dial M for Murder [1954]), Richard Gere as Jean-Paul Belmondo [...]

Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience is an idea pushed forth to its logical conclusion. It is the film of a person completely reduced. Its method, of carrying an idea to its apex, is one that Jean-Luc Godard often praised in his writings as a film critic, and one that he evinces in his own work [...]

Other Voices, Other Rooms: Acoustic Design in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965)
As the title sequence of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion suggests, with its violation of the human eye in closeup by thin striations of text, the film we are about to watch is one concerned with altered perceptions. Like the infamous razoring scene from Luis Buñuel’s surrealist [...]

“It is not my job to give explanations,” he says with brusque finality, cutting the interviewer’s question off at the head. The man stands beside a gilded floor-to-ceiling mirror, his well-tailored reflection pronouncing the same answer. He smiles then, Alain Resnais, at the simplicity of his maneuver, the truth that it holds. He continues, stating [...]

The more I consider the tragedy of Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, the more I can’t help picturing Willy Loman and a scene from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. In the scene, a flashback, Willy is lecturing his eldest son on how to handle himself and the crowds at what he considers an important football [...]

LABYRINTH (1986)
Written & directed by Jim Henson
Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times: “The magnetism between newcomer Jennifer Connolly and David Bowie’s ornate codpiece is monumental!”
Hear hear, Mr. Ebert.
Dance, magic dance.

THE WHOLE SHOOTIN’ MATCH (1979)
Written & Directed by Eagle Pennell
Before Smith or Soderbergh, before Linklater or Sayles, a crook-nosed lad from Austin, Texas named Eagle was inadvertently inventing modern American independent cinema. Shot over a number of weekends on a zero budget with borrowed equipment, The Whole Shootin’ Match very casually made the statement that [...]

“I think it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support. We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone.”  — Sean Penn, on the passing of [...]