The year is 1983. The setting is Washington D.C., the nation’s decadent and corrupt foundation upon which swindling political power brokers plot, scheme, and shuffle around Americans’ hard-earned taxpaying dollars like obnoxious Scotch-fueled frat boys drunkenly dealing monogrammed playing cards. The infamous Marion Barry (D.C.’s mayoral “Scarface in Miami” equivalent) presides over a city splattered …
Countless wealthy white musicians have copied, have been heavily influenced by, or have shamelessly ripped off black blues guitarists/singers who lived in poverty during the 1920s and the Depression era of the 1930s. These wealthy white musicians more often add flash without feeling, style without substance. This criticism cannot be leveled at Ry Cooder’s deeply …
For the past thirty years, it is evident that the weirdest and most surreal place in cinema emerges from the mind of David Lynch. Since his debut film, the strange and avantgarde Eraserhead (1977), much of Lynch’s output has been the perfect fuel for nightmares: mutated creatures, bizarre murder mysteries, fractured psyches, disturbing dreams, etc. Before …
There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai unless perhaps that of the tiger in the jungle. Book of Bushido Something is wrong with Jef Costello (The Samourai‘s theme, it is one of those rare cases in which the film music is a crucial factor for the analysis of the film. It is …
History has puzzling patterns. Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman (two film directors who both explored the post-World War II malaise of European society) died on the same day in 2007. Ten years later another juxtaposition was just as revealing about American society. George Romero (who directed the most politically charged horror film of the 1960s) …
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan “You know, sometimes things I see in you, me and even Grandad remind me of a wild pear tree. I don’t know. We’re all misfits, solitary, misshapen.“ Nuri Bilge Ceylan is at the peak of his powers and on an impressive roll: since the Turkish auteur made his first feature film …
Melancholia is a very special film for me, coming from my favorite director in cinema, the Danish Lars von Trier. The story begins with the opera “Tristan und Isolde“, by the legendary composer Richard Wagner. While we listen to it we see the space trajectory of a mysterious and unknown planet that is getting closer …
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan “Not seeing a man for what he is, idolizing him like a god, and then being mad at him, because he’s not a god. Do you think that’s fair?” Inspired by three short stories by Anton Chekhov and some of Dostoevsky’s writings, Winter Sleep is the most ambitious film by the …
December 1 ~ Pandora’s Box (1929) Released on December 1, 1929, Louise Brooks embodies the “flapper” spirit of her Lost Generation in this sexually charged and erotic silent melodrama ahead of its time in its depiction of the divide between men and the feminine psyche. It tragically ends in the winter slums of Soho during …
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville [Exterior. Paris. Grey, grey, grey.] Alain Delon, Gian-Maria Volonté and Yves Montand play an unlikely trio- one was just released from jail, the second fled it, and the third is an ex-cop. The three plan a big coup by breaking into a big jewelry store at Place Vendome and are being chased …
