Cracking the enigma of David Lynch is as simple as watching The Wizard of Oz, so claims Lynch/Oz. Divided into six chapters, the video essay features a range of critics and filmmakers engaging in discussions about the thematic and visual parallels between David Lynch and the iconic Victor Fleming film. …
Peter Delpeut's compilation of film fragments ca. 1905-15 (no big names or faces) from a cache discovered in the attic of the Cinema Parisien in Amsterdam in 1955. Though arranged into several loose categories — "Looking," "Protagonists," "Passion," "Dying," etc. — this is a most un-Chuck-Workman-like creation. Individual clips are …
There still remains plenty of interest in the manhunt story, told with the imaginative gimmicks of one of Andersen's gorier fairy tales plus some modernized (ca. 1931) touches of abnormal psychology, in which everybody from the enraged police department down to the edgy criminal fraternity pounds the trail of a …
Two years after M3GAN, a marvel of artificial intelligence, went rogue and embarked on a murderous (and impeccably choreographed) rampage and was subsequently destroyed, M3GAN’s creator Gemma (Allison Williams) has become a high-profile author and advocate for government oversight of A.I. Meanwhile, Gemma’s niece Cady (Violet McGraw), now 14, has …
The venue flips from high school Animal House to sure-fire slaughterhouse after a vengeful veterinary assistant converts her garage into a niteclub for underage teens. Fifteen years in the business, with forty features and dozens more television credits behind her, it took The Help to finally turn Octavia Spencer into …
First punch!
Action film about a creative man who must find his brave side in order to battle a sinister group of party men who seem to be part of an already-written story that must be lived out. Written and directed by Madonne Ashwin, starring Sivakarthikeyan and Aditi Shankar.
The directorial debut of John Turturro, who also handles the title role, is a memorial to his father (1925-1988), a first-generation Italian immigrant, carpenter, and then independent contractor in Queens, N.Y., in the mid-1950s. Under the circumstances, it's a marvel of objectivity, or maybe not quite such a marvel of …
Maudlin apologia for the Japanese in World War II, set prudently just after truce. Certainly, children make a good symbol (or even good definition) of innocence, and a Little League baseball team makes a good symbol of the future. (How is it, though, that a team that's no match for …
Roman Polanski's neither very engaging, nor very clearly motivated, version of the Shakespeare tragedy, acted by a young and little-known cast. There are a few stunning surrealistic visions, and the violence, in tin-soldier armor suits, is herky-jerkily hectic. Several minor roles in the original play have been combined economically into …