If filmmakers Scott Glosserman and Nic Hill initially set out to present an “neutral” examination of Wikipedia they fortunately had the good sense to drop the pretense after speaking to the site’s co-founder Jimmy Wales. In one scene, the confident…
Like many of the characters in John Cassavetes’ films, Sarah Lawson (Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes’ wife) is all impulse and no filter. To want or to need is to act immediately on that desire with no thought given to context or…
The following text begins with the review written by John J. Puccio for the 2002 Miramax DVD release of “A Hard Day’s Night.” The rest is written by Christopher Long on the occasion of the 2014 Criterion dual-format release of…
Harold Lamb only cares about one thing: being the most popular man at Tate University (described in a title card as “a large football stadium with a college attached” and looking an awful lot like USC). He practices school cheers…
The first fifteen minutes of “The Hidden Fortress” (1958) are as accomplished as anything in Akira Kurosawa’s body of work. In the first shot we meet the peasants Tahei (Minoru Chiaki) and Matashichi (Kamatari Fujiwara) as they limp across a…
Since “George Washington” (2000) opens with a teenage girl’s dreamy, wise-beyond-her-years narration as the camera floats in slow-motion through waving fields of grass and glides along railroad tracks, you probably don’t need to be told that first-time feature director David…
Please accept my apologies, but I gave up on “Blue Is The Warmest Color” (2013) at the ten-minute mark. This is no way a reflection on the movie’s quality, but my own reaction to director Abdellatif Kechiche’s stylistic choices. The…
Steven Soderbergh made it difficult for auteurist critics from the very start. The chameleon-like director who has hopped genres and budget levels more than any other major filmmaker over the past two decades looked like he had staked his claim…
“The Turin Horse” and “Jeanne Dielman” are my ideas of cinematic bliss. When frustrated viewers complain that “nothing happens” in a movie, save me an aisle seat. By that standard, Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Nostalghia” (1983) should be a natural fit. Long shots of…
The following is a review of the the new three-disc set from Criterion’s Eclipse Collection: “Late Ray” which includes the films “The Home and the World,” “An Enemy of the People,” and “The Stranger.” Writer-director (and composer and camera operator…