Capsule Reviews: While the City Sleeps, Cracking Up, The Kid, Rock of Ages

While the City Sleeps (Fritz Lang, 1956) Fritz Lang's underseen noir blends the yellowest of journalism with King Lear  in a prescient, ...

Every Man for Himself (Jean-Luc Godard, 1980)

In a stroke of peevish irony, Jean-Luc Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie) , touted even by the director as his return to cinema, is a film...

Opeth: Blackwater Park/Deliverance/Damnation

I reviewed some reissues of Swedish progressive death metal band Opeth's early 2000s output for Spectrum Culture. I've been an admir...

The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)

[The following is my June entry for Blind Spots .] More than one person has referred to William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives  as ...

Brave (Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, 2012)

Brave  is at once the most visually distinctive project Pixar has yet made and their most derivative work. Slightly dimmed as if filmed by n...

Extraterrestrial (Nacho Vigalondo, 2012)

I wish I could better put my finger on what felt amiss about Extraterrestrial . There's nothing really wrong  with the movie: it follows...

Blu-Ray Review: Green Lantern

[I received this disc from Warner Bros. as part of their Blu-Ray Elite program.] Film Green Lantern  feels like the superhero equivalent of ...

Corpo Celeste (Alice Rohrwacher, 2012)

I have a love-hate relationship with realist cinema, a love for the movies that genuinely capture a naturalistic tone while also evoking som...

A Tale of Two Vampyres

My latest piece at Spectrum Culture is a comparison between F.W. Murnau's seminal Nosferatu  and Werner Herzog's 1979 remake starrin...

In a Year of 13 Moons (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978)

[This is an post for the Queer Film Blogathon, co-hosted by Pussy Goes Grrr and Garbo Laughs .] Made in the aftermath of his lover Armin Me...

Poison (Todd Haynes, 1991)

[This is a post for the Queer Film Blogathon, co-hosted by Pussy Goes Grrr and Garbo Laughs .] Todd Haynes' formal experimentation has ...

Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012)

[Warning: contains spoilers] The mythological and philosophical ideas co-writer Damon Lindelof shoehorns into Prometheus  are intriguing one...

Paul Williams Still Alive (Stephen Kessler, 2012)

I love Paul Williams. I love his songwriting, and I adore him as a record producer/Antichrist in Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradis...

Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012)

Incorporating many elements of Wes Anderson's previous films,  Moonrise Kingdom  might be seen, even approvingly, as the director going ...

Capsule Reviews: Other Men's Women, The Lovers on the Bridge, The Lady Eve, The Purchase Price

Other Men's Women (William A. Wellman, 1931) Mary Astor herself called this picture a piece of cheese, but cheddar can be mighty sharp. ...