The genius of the Jason Bourne movies is their welding of existentialist inquiry with the demands of the thriller in a globalist age. Adapted from Robert Ludlum’s series, Doug Liman and screenwriters Tony Gilroy and W. Blake Herron established the template with The Bourne Identity, locating their film’s MacGuffin not in the outside world but under the skin of its hero. As ex-intelligence operative Jason Bourne skips from city to city, pursuing clue after clue, he is ultimately investigating not a case but his own identity. What kind of man was — is — he? For my money, the first […]

To try to recall your favorite films from an entire decade (and then to limit them to only ten titles) is to immediately set yourself up for uncertainty and ridicule: first off because it’s hard enough to remember what you saw ten days ago, much less ten years ago, and secondly because to limit the list to ten is to leave hundreds of excellent films out, titles that you’ll undoubtedly get bludgeoned to death with through later feedback (“You blithering idiot~pretentious snob~Hollywood tool! How could you leave out Judd Apatow~Jean-Luc Godard~Abbas Kiarostami~McG,” read the heated responses to already posted lists). […]

In September we put up a survey on our site that aimed at getting input from filmmakers about some of the issues that impact the making and preservation of their films. Below are the results of the survey. These stats have been passed on to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their final report which they will be publishing sometime next year. The only results that aren’t posted below are the ones where a written answer was required. And for those who aren’t familiar, read the story that inspired this survey. Thanks to those who participated. Please […]

Susan Seidelman’s landmark 1982 debut feature, Smithereens, recently made its Cable VOD debut on Cinetic’s FilmBuff channel. It will soon be made available on iTunes, Amazon VOD, and more. Seidelman reflects on the origins of her Manhattan indie classic as it finds new audiences today. I moved to New York City in the mid 1970s, to go to NYU film school. At that time the grad school was housed in a funky building on East 7th street and Second Ave — a space it shared with a rock club called the Fillmore East. The mid-to-late ’70s was a transitional time […]

The following essay by David Gordon Green on Todd Rohal’s The Guatemalan Handshake accompanies the film’s DVD release from Benten Films out today. I am plagued by two mothers of frustration: 1. POWER PROBLEMS: Who controls the switches? Who pushes the buttons? How do I get to be large and in charge like Arsenio Hall’s portly alter ego Chunky A? 2. LOST AND FOUND: Why did you leave? Where did you go? Or have I just forgotten where I put you? Todd Rohal’s first feature length movie The Guatemalan Handshake revolves around these issues through a series of characters and […]

The following essay by Ray Carney on Aaron Katz’s Quiet City accompanies a 2-disc DVD release from Benten Films out this week of Quiet City and Katz’s first film, Dance Party, USA. Mainstream film is so much an art of the maximum – the biggest, the flashiest, the fastest, the most exaggerated – that it is easy to forget that the great films all go in the opposite direction. They are, almost without exception, triumphs of minimalism. They rely on subtlety, understatement, indirection, and simplification. In Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, and Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch sets long sections […]

Director Paul Rachman retraces the history of punk rock. Paul Rachman’s American Hardcore is a salute to the U.S. underground punk scene that exploded in 1980. Inspired by Steven Blush’s 2001 book American Hardcore: A Tribal History (Feral House), Rachman’s blunt documentary was culled from over 120 hours of interview footage, as well as a stack of archival concert videos compiled from closets, shoeboxes and fan memorabilia stashes. The film also documents a phenomenon that Rachman and Blush observed firsthand, before the scene fizzled in the mid-’80s. “The scene burned out before anybody came to capitalize on it, so it’s […]

The director of Head-On investigates the rich musical culture of his homeland. DIRECTOR FATIH AKIN. The soundtrack and score of the critically acclaimed, adrenaline fueled doomed romance Head-On was a fusion of punk, European electronica, hip-hop, British new wave and traditional Turkish laments, so it’s no great surprise that the Turkish-German director Fatih Akin’s new movie is a documentary about the vibrant and diverse music community in Istanbul. It’s the city where Head-On music composer Alexander Hacke, better known as a member of the avant-garde band Einstuezende Neubauten, recorded a few songs for Head-On — and became fascinated by the […]