Seize the Day
Have you ever felt like you were not leading the life you imagined for yourself or worse – you had achieved success in your field but felt as if everything had become a boring, mechanical routine and...
View ArticleHenri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau
In a small village in rural France, an anonymous writer sends a series of poison-pen letters to selected residents. Signed with the mysterious name of “Le Corbeau”, the letters accuse the new physician...
View ArticleEarthling Wanted as Spokesperson for Extraterrestrials
During the early years of the science fiction film craze of the 1950s most alien visitors were hostile or extremely dangerous as in The Thing from Another World (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953) and...
View ArticleThe Watcher and the Watched
A lonely nineteen-year-old boy watches his neighbor Magda (Grazyna Szapolowska) through binoculars as she moves about her apartment across the courtyard in her underwear. Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko) has...
View ArticleIt Came from Brazil
What are the circumstances that lead to the formation of a new film movement? For the pioneers of the neorealism movement in Italy, it was the need to address the problems of the country in the...
View ArticleEdward G. Robinson is Wolf Larsen
Among the many tales about ill-fated ocean voyages, obsessive and tyrannical sea captains are usually at the root of the trouble. Some of the more memorable ones include Captain Ahab in Moby Dick,...
View ArticleUnholy Alliances
Ever since the international box office success of The Exorcist in 1973, horror films dealing with religion and priests have usually focused on demonic possession. This trend even continues today as...
View ArticleYma Sumac: Inca Goddess
Yma Sumac, that rarest of exotic songbirds, officially became an extinct species on Saturday, Nov. 1, 2008 in Silver Lake, California. Her passing was barely noticed by the media despite the fact that...
View ArticleKafkaesque
In October of 1970, the Canadian government was thrown into a state of turmoil by the actions of Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ), a terrorist group that wanted to achieve independence for Quebec...
View ArticleThe Big Bang
Why would a scientist create a weapon of mass destruction that was capable of destroying the planet and ending life as we know it? J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who led the Manhattan...
View ArticleThe Game of Adultery
Giallo thrillers and spaghetti westerns are generally considered genres created by the Italian film industry but producers and filmmakers in other European countries also created their own versions in...
View ArticleThe Year the Music Died
Most musicologists and historians of popular culture generally agree that rock and roll is an American creation but, as a lifetime music lover, I particularly love hearing and seeing how that pop...
View ArticleMathematical Riddles
Peter Greenaway is not the sort of director who has ever tried to appeal to the average moviegoer or make a mainstream film but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t enjoyed a long and successful career in the...
View ArticleThe Shame of Shantytown
One of the most famous Japanese directors of his generation (1912-2012) to emerge from the post-WW2 years was Kaneto Shindo but, outside of a handful of films, most of his work remains largely unseen...
View ArticleSmells Like Teen Spirit
Was high school the most emotionally turbulent rite of passage every teenager had to endure? For some, like French director Olivier Assayas, it was a period of time that helped transform him into the...
View ArticleBreaking Up is Hard to Do
In The Devil’s Dictionary, a satirical lexicon written by Ambrose Bierce which was first published in 1906 under the title The Cynic’s Word Book, marriage is described as “The state or condition of a...
View ArticleDancing Fools
When writer-director Whit Stillman made his film debut in 1990 with Metropolitan, he stood out from other filmmakers of his generation by creating a witty comedy-drama that felt like a drawing room...
View ArticleA Scorned Woman’s Wrath
Are you well versed in Greek mythology? You’ll need to be if you take a deep dive into Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 version of Medea starring the world’s most famous opera diva Maria “La Divina” Callas...
View ArticleIn Their Own Words: Actors on Film Flops and Disappointments
Nobody sets out to make a bad movie. Why would they? Not only is it a colossal waste of money but it will remain on the permanent record of everyone associated with it. Still, there are factors that no...
View ArticleRest Home of the Cruel Puppet
Have you ever noticed that some international film titles just don’t translate easily into English? Take, for example, the German B-movie crime thriller Das Rasthaus der grausamen Puppen (1967),...
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