"All the same, there was something going on which remains true, even when the words and pictures are mostly made up." In 1990, playwright Tom Stoppard directed a movie version of his acclaimed play
The difference between the two obsessive quests in The Searchers (1956) and French Connection II (1975) is one of quantity: Popeye Doyle’s one goal, revenging himself on the hedonistic narcotics
1. Manny Farber, his goal: "to get himself to disappear. To get the object in question to shimmer with its own unique sense of awe." 2. An improving exercise: Watch a favorite film on DVD at 1/8th
An interview with the director upon the release of The Bad Lieutenant and My Son, My Son.
Following a roundup of reviews of films opening this weekend, a look ahead at some of the titles rolling out through Christmas, including, of course, the season's big event movie. "Philadelphia for
Director Peter Jackson has had one of the most unusual journeys in contemporary film history, going from frantic micro-budgeted shock-horror-comedy grossouts shot in his native New Zealand in the mid
The film side of Canadian Artists ’68—an open competition that started with 120 entries and ended with 20 finalists and four prizewinners dividing $6,000— leaves strong impressions, stronger
Whenever the modern film-maker feels that his movie has taken too conventional a direction and is neglecting “art,” he need only jerk the Gimp-string, and–behold!–curious and exotic but “psychic”
This article was originally published as coverage of the New York Film Festival in 2005, but is being re-posted due to The Sun finally achieving a theatrical release in the U.S. *** Issei Ogata as
Like Aleksandr Sokurov's The Sun (see yesterday's entry), John Woo's Red Cliff opens in New York today before traveling on to other US cities. "This $80 million epic - which is being touted as the
Above: Farber's painting A Dandy's Gesture (1977). Farber’s 1969 Howard Hawks essay––as hinted earlier––lodges a wry double self‑portrait: as he summons his own birthplace for a joke about small‑town
You don’t necessarily think of Manny Farber as your Baedeker to the shadings and luridities of mainstay American movie acting, as a dab hand of the concise plot summary that uncoils into deft film