Sydney Pollack’s The Yakuza (1975) is an idiosyncratic but fascinating blend of incongruous tones made all the stranger by the difference in sensibilities among the men behind the camera. The film started as a script by brothers Paul and Leonard Schrader, who sold it for a boatload of cash thanks to the high-concept premise: an ex-soldier from the U.S. travels to Japan and infiltrates the underworld in a mash-up of the American action flick and the Asian martial arts film. Once Pollack came on board to direct the movie became something less commercial but, in its way, more compelling; uncomfortable […]

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 it’s a film about a particularly American issue made by two American filmmakers, but it apparently hit too close to home at the time. So despite being a top 10 box-office hit that year in the country that actually produced it (Japan), the film never saw the light of day in the U.S. other than an extended run at New […]

Throughout this year’s Neither/Neither program at the 13th annual True/False Film Festival, I found myself frequently calling to mind storied Los Angeles film curator John Fles’ concept of “analytic programming.” Far less pedantic than the label suggests, Fles’ directive calls, quite simply, for the curatorial consideration of films with “subjects usually tabooed” — works of artistic merit that, when investigated at all, are generally “dealt with a kind of academic-aesthetic paternalism which robs these often wild films of their real content: as blasters of the traditional mores.” To say that this year’s Neither/Nor titles blasted traditional mores would be an understatement. The four […]