Parallax View

Welcome 2011 with one last look back at the best releases of 2010, as seen by the contributors to Parallax View. Sean Axmaker 1. Carlos 2. Let Me In 3. The Social Network 4. White Material 5. Winter’s Bone 6. The Ghost Writer 7. Wild Grass 8. Eccentricities Of A Blond Haired Girl 9. Sweetgrass [...]

A tradition (on and off) for close of forty years: Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy remember the year in film through the images, lines, gestures, moods from the defining releases: moments out of time, plucked from the films and celebrated on the page. Here are a few moments from this year’s celebration at MSN: [...]

[Originally published in Movietone News 35, September 1974] Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world… Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant [...]

[Originally published in Queen Anne & Magnolia News, June 2, 2010] Among the trio of directors crowned as Emerging Masters by the 2010 Seattle International Film Festival, Australian Ana Kokkinos seems a mite premature. On the evidence of the three Kokkinos films I’ve seen—Head On, Blessed and The Book of Revelation (not in SIFF but [...]

[Originally published in Queen Anne & Magnolia News, May 26, 2010] What are film festivals and film critics good for? Well, for one thing, discovering and boosting new or under-appreciated talent. And don’t discount the power of such visual and verbal exposure: that’s precisely how a little film called The Hurt Locker stole the Oscar [...]

[Originally published in Queen Anne & Magnolia News, June 9, 2010] Notes on the final week by Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy Protektor (Marek Najbrt, Czech Republic/Germany, 2009; 98 mins.) The World War II years remain an inexhaustible source of dramatic material, and as our culture grows ever more amnesiac, it’s probably salutary that [...]

[Originally published in Queen Anne & Magnolia News, June 2, 2010] Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy light up the third week of the festival Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (Jessica Oreck, USA, 2009; 91 mins.) Buried in this all-over-the-map meditation on Japan’s fascination with insects are lovely, nearly mystical moments. Did you know that there’s [...]

[Originally published in Queen Anne & Magnolia News, May 26, 2010] Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy scope out the fest’s second week The Hedgehog (Mona Achache, France, 2009; 98 mins.) This quietly affecting French fairy tale features one of the most adorable children ever, a grave-faced prodigy whose thick, curly blond hair always gets [...]

[Originally published in Queen Anne & Magnolia News, May 19, 2010] Something familiar, something peculiar Something appealing, something appalling Goodness and badness, manifest madness! Something convulsive, something repulsive Something aesthetic, something frenetic Something that’s gaudy, something that’s bawdy Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight! That’s the ticket! This year’s Seattle International Film Festival promises to deliver all [...]

[Originally published in Queen Anne & Magnolia News, May 19, 2010] Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy scope out opening-week films Prince of Tears (Yonfan, Hong Kong/Taiwan, 2009; 122 mins.) Who knew that about the same time (the early 1950s) McCarthyism was peaking in the United States, a parallel reign of terror was sweeping the [...]

[originally published in The Austin Chronicle, October 22, 1999] Nowadays, most movies look factory-made, mechanically repeating cast, storyline, or F/X from the last big blockbuster. They touch us skin-deep, ask nothing of us but box-office, kill time and vanish. In contrast, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is like getting accosted by a wild-eyed [...]

[Originally published in Film Comment Volume 17 Number 1, January/February 1981] “Ah know you. You’re the guy in the hole.” —Gold Hat to Fred C. Dobbs, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Toward the end of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, just before his self-shattering execution of Kris Kristofferson’s Billy, James Coburn as Pat [...]

In March 2010, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon, The Circle, Crimson Gold and Offside) was arrested and locked up in Tehran’s Evin prison, initially for “unspecified crimes,” then on charges directly related to his work. Though Mr. Panahi’s award-winning films have brought credit to his native land, his countrymen have been banned from seeing his work during [...]

[Originally published in Movietone News 10, January 1972] Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs reminds us that in our rush to civilization, we too often deny the violent origins of our favorite myths and rituals—and pretend that the primal power of our lizard brains never was. Who wants to recall that Christian Communion is a sanitized version [...]

[Originally published in Film Comment Volume 21 Number 2, April 1985] There is the grand truth …. He says No! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,—why, they … cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a [...]