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From the Kitchen to the Shower
Jeanne Dielman (Photo courtesy of The Criterion Collection)
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 bruxelles What are the films you lie about having seen ? A friend posed this question to me recently, and it’s a telling query. Not only about your own ethical barometer, but also about… Read more
Ruptures and Disturbances
The Killing of America (Photo courtesy of Severin Films)
The Killing of America The recent Severin Films Blu-ray/DVD release of the 1981 documentary The Killing of America marks the first time this notorious cult item has ever been commercially distributed in the U.S. in any form — ironic, given that… Read more
Blood in the Snow
Blood Bath (Photo courtesy of Arrow Films)
Blood Bath “Wait, what happened?” asks Sid Haig at the end of the entertaining but nonsensical 1966 AIP flick Blood Bath, and one can’t help but wonder if it’s intended as a wry bit of self-critique on the part of… Read more
American Dreams and Nightmares
The Boost (Photo courtesy of Olive Films)
The Boost Released a year after the Partnership for a Drug-Free America’s “This Is Your Brain on Drugs” campaign frightened children into never eating their morning eggs, Harold Becker’s The Boost was this PSA’s cinematic equivalent for adults. An adaptation of political… Read more
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Killers in Italy and the Forest
Wake Up and Kill A seminal crime movie from one of Italy’s most important and underrated directors of the 1960s, Wake Up and Kill represents a fascinating intersection between the neorealist films that preceded it and the explosion of Italian genre fare to follow. Directly inspired by then-recent headlines, the picture tells the story of Luciano Lutring (Robert Hoffmann), an armed robber known as the “machine gun soloist,” who committed over a hundred heists in Italy and France. In real life, Lutring became a sort of folk hero, but in director Carlo Lizzani’s riff on events that had taken place […]
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Dark in the Daytime
Blue City The 1986 release Blue City might not be one of the best movies Walter Hill ever had his name on, but it’s certainly one of the most fascinating from an auteurist standpoint, despite the fact that Hill isn’t even its auteur. That credit goes to Michelle Manning, who got the job while still in her mid-20s after her former boss, Ned Tanen, took over as head of Paramount. Manning’s early career trajectory was swift: fresh out of University of Southern California film school, she rose from Zoetrope production assistant to a position as Tanen’s associate producer on a […]
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Super 8: Toy Cars and Tomorrow’s Education
Dear Sugar Radio For those who worried that, after her Wild success, Cheryl Strayed’s lucid and literate advice column “Dear Sugar” was no more, fear not. “Dear Sugar” has been resurrected, this time as a podcast co-hosted by “Mr. Sugar,” the writer Steve Almond. The original “Sugar,” in fact, and Strayed’s recruiter, Almond adds a probing rhetorical counterpoint to Strayed’s personal counseling, making Sugar 2.0 a multilayered conversation about such topics as ditching friends, cheating and families good and bad. Produced by WBUR, Dear Sugar Radio can be found on iTunes. The Graduate School Mess On the heels of last […]
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Talk, Write, Kill
Best Seller An old-school scribe who never met a genre he couldn’t work in, Larry Cohen honed his craft as a writer on ’50s and ’60s television before graduating to features via assignments like Return of the Seven and a series of unproduced treatments for Alfred Hitchcock (one of which would resurface decades later as the Colin Farrell vehicle Phone Booth). Cohen promoted himself to director in 1972 with Bone, a wickedly funny class satire in which a white couple’s repressed tensions are brought to the surface by an encounter with a black man who wanders onto their property. Shot, […]
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Load & Play
Caveh Zahedi In One Fell Swoop By Peter Rinaldi DVD is not dead. It’s the new vinyl. Unconvinced? Perhaps a six DVD set of an important and influential American director’s films, most of which have never been released on video, will change your mind. Factory 25’s “Digging My Own Grave: The Films of Caveh Zahedi” might be the most comprehensive collection of an independent filmmaker’s work available in one set: five feature films, over two dozen shorts, a feature-length series of video letters, and a plethora of extras, all housed in a handsome 100-plus page hardcover book … oh, not […]
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Load & Play
Blue Caprice Sundance Selects – January 14 The title character in Alexandre Moors’ stunning debut Blue Caprice was, like so many of that make and model, a police car. That is until it was retrofitted for terror by John Allen Muhammad, who drilled a hole in the trunk from which the 17-year-old John Lee Malvo, at the ex-U.S. Army marksman Muhammad’s urging, shot 10 people to death during the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks. Brought to terrifying life by the remarkable Isaiah Washington as Muhammad and Tequan Richmond (TV’s Everybody Hates Chris) as Malvo, Caprice’s menacing, built-for-maximum-glide vibe, all stark blues, […]
