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(02/02/12 12:00am)
Charlie Chaplin is renowned for his silent films produced in America, but he was actually a British export; he migrated to the United States in his early 20s. His line of influence runs from Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot through Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean. Now is good a time to emphasis his contemporary relevance, as The Artist, has recently become the first black-and-white silent film in decades to be nominated for multiple Academy Awards.
(01/18/12 12:00am)
It has taken so long for me to write a review on Martin Scorsese because I assumed the whole world knew and loved his films and the thickly bespectacled, furry-browed, Italian New Yorker didn't need any more attention. However, the other day, I made a reference to Raging Bull in conversation. "Raging what?" my fellow conversant asked. I then realized there is a problem with the state of Scorsese awareness.
(12/01/11 12:00am)
In case you find yourself at home this winter sipping hot cocoa with nothing better to do than expand your cinematic consciousness, here is a list of some fantastic films, both new and old, which will hopefully while away the winter blues. You will notice that the majority of these films are neither actually holiday-themed nor in any particular order, but great films need no season.
(11/17/11 12:00am)
Once upon a very sad time, I erroneously thought that I had seen every funny movie in existence. By the age of 12, I had zoomed through the comedic classics of the 1980s and subsequently sailed through the gems of the 1990s. But one day, my parents forced me to sit through Some Like it Hot, a comedy my grandfather would likely have enjoyed in his prime.
(11/02/11 12:00am)
Born Allen Stewart Konigsberg, Woody Allen is one of a handful of Renaissance men in the film industry. Even in his seventh decade, he has kept up the pace of releasing about one film a year, if not more; he released Midnight in Paris to widespread critical acclaim this past summer, and is currently working on the film Nero Fiddled, which is set for release in 2012. Apparently, I am not alone in my admiration: film-making legend Francis Ford Coppola himself once wished that to be able write as freely as Woody Allen did so that he would not have to always work from another writer's screenplay.
(10/20/11 12:00am)
Few directors can claim to be more influential than Ingmar Bergman. Martin Scorsese said, "I guess I'd put it like this: If you were alive in the '50s and the '60s and of a certain age, a teenager on your way to becoming an adult, and you wanted to make films, I don't see how you couldn't be influenced by Bergman." Woody Allen, an unlikely disciple, said that Bergman was "probably the greatest film artist, all things considered, since the invention of the motion picture camera."
(10/06/11 12:00am)
Most film buffs will at least pause at the altar of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. So much has been elegantly said and written about Kurosawa that it feels almost redundant to write an appreciation of his films, but his influence seems to be more indirectly felt by modern audiences. Kurosawa's works have inspired popular filmmakers, from western film guru0 John Ford to the king of pulp, Quentin Tarantino.
(09/22/11 12:00am)
In a list of the greatest artistic works of the 20th century, Harold Bloom, arguably one of the America's most prominent and influential literary and cultural critics, named Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, a selection of poetic works of Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens, William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and the Marx Brothers comedy Duck Soup. This last cinematic inclusion in Bloom's 20th-century American sublime may come as a surprise: All the other choices were serious works of high art, but Duck Soup was a frivolous 1930s comedy! How could that possibly be included, while Citizen Kane was out?
(09/08/11 12:00am)
Before writing off all Indian cinema as sub-par because of the rather dime-a-dozen, homogeneous output of contemporary Bollywood cinema, you ought to see the films of Satyajit Ray. Believe it or not, breaking out in song and dance has not always been the norm in Indian cinema; before that, there was Ray, the first true master of ?Indian film.
(08/25/11 12:00am)
The first film to win all five of the major Academy Awards (Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay and Best Picture) was Frank Capra's still-fresh screwball comedy It Happened One Night in 1934. It would be more than four decades before Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest pulled off this same fantastic feat in 1975. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest is the film that converted me from a 2000s-film lover to pre-1980s-film seeker. Prior to seeing the film, I had an unfair prejudice toward films not made during my lifetime; if a movie had not been made in the '90s or '00s, I thought it impossible for it to make me laugh or to even keep my attention for more than eight minutes.
(04/15/11 12:00am)
Last Saturday, Sidney Lumet died at 86. Who knew that Sidney Lumet was alive all these years anyway? The name Sidney Lumet may not be as commonplace as other directors like Martin Scorsese or Spike Lee. Nevertheless, Lumet's films are as much a part of our film consciousness as any of theirs. Lumet's 43 films have garnered over 50 Oscar nominations in total. Some of his notable films include Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), The Verdict (1982) and his last film, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007); his first and probably most significant feature film, 12 Angry Men, was released in 1957. If you've never heard of the film, it is quite likely that you've at least seen some manifestation or reference to the film on television at some point.
(04/01/11 12:00am)
Why has animation been so popular these days? Recently, Avatar, a 3-D animation-heavy film about a planet of blue human-alien hybrids, became the highest grossing film of all time. Pixar, the studio that produced animated films such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo, has also produced great commercial successes worldwide.
(02/25/11 12:00am)
If you're one for Oscar trivia, check out a list of winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture from decades ago. The Academy has always had a knack for either failing to nominate or failing to choose from the nominees the truly best films of the year, a grand tradition which continues to this day. I have noticed a correlation in the context of these films: commercial success and artistic quality are quite often inversely related. For both of these reasons, I have always been skeptical of William Wyler's 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives, which became the highest grossing film in the United States since Gone with the Wind. In addition, it received seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay. But seeing The Best Years of Our Lives on so many great films lists annoyed me into setting my Oscar and commercial success prejudices aside and at least giving the ?film a watch.
(02/11/11 12:00am)
The way I see it, the Pennsylvanian Germans invented the holiday of Groundhog Day so that, centuries later, it might inspire Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin to pen the remarkable screenplay of the film Groundhog Day, which was one of the nicest cinematic surprises to find among a collection of old family DVDs.The movie follows the story of Phil Connors (Bill Murray, Ghostbusters), an egotistical weatherman who comes to Punxsatawney, Pa. to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities for his TV station in Pittsburgh. But when a snow storm shuts down the roads, Phil and his crew - news producer Rita (Andie MacDowell, Four Weddings and a Funeral) and cameraman Larry (Chris Elliott, Cabin Boy) - are forced to stay an extra day in the small town. Up until this point, the film might seem a bit unremarkable and reminiscent of the '90s.
(01/28/11 12:00am)
Sylvain Chomet's recent animated film, L'Illusionniste, is based on a script the great French comedic filmmaker Jacques Tati (1907-1982) wrote in 1956 for an unproduced live-action film. (He had intended to shoot the movie with his estranged daughter, but his attempt at reunion unfortunately never came to fruition.) It would do viewers of this film some good to know the history behind Tati and his original work.Mr. Hulot's Holiday is a foreign film originally released in 1953. The film is foreign not only because it is in French but also because it is strange and exotic. Mr. Hulot's Holiday is far removed from the film comedies of its era. At heart, it is a silent film, sans spoken words but with murmurs of human voices, sound effects aplenty and a soundtrack composed of a single jazzy motif. Tati's experience as a mime is readily apparent - Mr. Hulot seems unable to speak, but his trademark slouched posture and childlike shenanigans are insights into the workings of a perpetually bemused man at odds with the rapidly evolving world around him.
(01/14/11 12:00am)
Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter of Adaptation (2002), is one member of the sparse crowd of directors and screenwriters who force you to rethink the limits of the human imagination. Kaufman bends genres, characters and minds in his best films, which include Being John Malkovich (1999), Human Nature (2001), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), and Synecdoche, New York (2008). All are among the most complex, comedic and confounding films in recent history. These films are not to be pigeonholed into categories like "dramedy" or "romantic comedy" - it is better to posit that they merely exist in time, space and film.In Adaptation, Kaufman blends fiction with reality, writing himself (or rather, a version of himself) into the screenplay. Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage, Leaving Las Vegas) is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles who, during the filming of Being John Malkovich, is hired to write a screenplay based on the book The Orchid Thief. Living with Charlie is his fictional twin brother Donald (also Cage), a less talented writer than his brother. But the "genius" - as Donald calls Charlie - finds directly adapting the boring book on orchids to be an astonishingly Herculean task; in an effort to break through his severe writer's block, Charlie even attends one of screenwriter Robert McKee's famous seminars.
(12/03/10 12:00am)
When talking about my favorite comedy films with friends, I sometimes forget that not everyone has seen This is Spinal Tap. Only grossing $4.5 million when it was released in 1984, This is Spinal Tap has been awarded a so-called "cult" status. However, This is Spinal Tap has had tremendous influence on the current generation of comedy. A world without This is Spinal Tap would mean a world without other "mockumentary"-style movies or TV shows like "The Office" (both the U.K. and U.S. versions), "Flight of the Conchords" or Borat. Since their film debut, the band Spinal Tap has released albums, played sold-out concerts at the Royal Albert Hall and Wembley Arena and appeared on "The Simpsons." At least among comedians, the cult of Spinal Tap is a large one. David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean, "Laverne and Shirley"), Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer, Godzilla) and Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest, Waiting for Guffman) form the musical trio Spinal Tap, who believe they have finally found their niche in the heavy metal genre after starting out as a 1960s folk group. A documentary crew follows Spinal Tap in their attempt to make it as a band. It is a journey riddled with mishaps, misunderstandings and miscommunication.
(11/19/10 12:00am)
Although he has been compared to classical painters, Robert Crumb does not work with oils, pastels or charcoal: Crumb led the underground comic movement of the 1960s with a scratchy drawing style and a controversial autobiographical edge that remain influential in graphic literature today. Few films probe into the depths of artistic genius better than Terry Zwigoff's Crumb. We are given a look into Crumb's depressing childhood, when he is bullied at home by his domineering father and at school: Crumb remembers, "I was good looking, but there was something wrong with my personality; I was the most unpopular kid in school." Even as an adult, Crumb is an outcast, enjoying obscure blues records and collecting dated pop-cultural ephemera. He speaks frankly of his outrageous fantasies and shows us the impetus behind his more twisted comics. Becoming an artist was Crumb's way of dealing with a culture that rejected him from the beginning.
(11/05/10 12:00am)
If you have never heard of German film director Werner Herzog, one of the early proponents of the New German Cinema movement of the '60s, '70s and '80s, I envy you - you are in for the movie-going experience of a lifetime. Many directors dilute their otherwise magnificent oeuvres by producing mediocre films in their later years. Herzog is the exception: a director who has yet to take a misstep in his work and continues to produce great films. In Stroszek, Bruno Stroszek (credited as Bruno S.), a recently released convict, his prostitute girlfriend Eva (Eva Mattes) and their senior neighbor Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz) leave their home in Germany for 1970s rural Wisconsin in search of a better life. Herzog builds up and tears down the American dream in Stroszek; Stroszek's hopes crumble before him as he slowly learns the harsh laws of life.
(10/22/10 12:00am)
German filmmaker Werner Herzog promised to eat his shoe if friend and fellow filmmaker Errol Morris were to complete his documentary on pet cemeteries and have it shown in theaters. Sure enough, Gates of Heaven - Morris' feature debut - was released in 1978, forcing Herzog to eat both his words and his shoe. Interested viewers can actually watch Herzog eat his shoe, boiled to perfection in garlic and herbs, in Les Blank's aptly named short, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. Gates of Heaven is a series of interviews centered on the shutdown of Floyd McClure's Foothill Pet Cemetery in Los Altos, Calif. and the subsequent transfer of the buried pets to Bubbling Well Pet Memorial Park in Napa Valley. The film is not narrated, and the story is told through the words of Morris' interviewees telling their pet stories. I never expected to find so much honest wisdom on life, eternity, love and death in the monologues of the pet cemetery owners, pet owners and pet lovers. Humor, philosophy and irony support Morris' film throughout - to say that Gates of Heaven is a movie about pet cemeteries is to misunderstand Morris' work. Great works of art begin with the specific and end in the realm of universal truths.
