Smart Words About Cinema
[originally published in Film Comment Volume 34 Number 1, January/February 1998, reprinted by permission] • The death of Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), L.A. Confidential: The gunshot comes as a cinematically rare and genuine shock, but this is crowned by a supreme actor’s-moment: Jack’s multivalenced chuckle—shoulda known better—as he plants the clue with which his killer [...]
[originally published in Steadycam No. 49, February 2006] • Broken Flowers: Bill Murray fitting himself around a forkful of perfectly formed carrot slices… • The Squid and the Whale: The father (Jeff Daniels), coming by what is no longer his own home to pick up one of his sons, points at a TV set and [...]
I’m winding down my year in DVD coverage with this highly subjective survey of the box sets of 2009 that brought new titles to DVD (no collections of previously released titles in new packages here). To be clear, I didn’t see every set that came along, or even every film in those that I did [...]
[originally published in Film Comment Volume 31 Number 1, January-February 1995, reprinted by permission] • At the beginning of Pulp Fiction, Amanda Plummer laying her head on the coffeeshop table and smiling: “I’m not gonna kill anybody”…. • Just-right treatment of place, climate, community in the main-title sequence of Nobody’s Fool… • Bunny (Bill Murray) [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 47, January 1976] • Keith Carradine singing “I’m Easy” to one or all of four women—and also, to be sure, himself: Nashville… • The awful pale blue oblong of Guinevere’s window, Lancelot du Lac: is it the only light in the world, or a glimpse into the void empty even [...]
[Originally published in Film Comment Volume 28 Number 1, January/February 1992, reprinted by permission] • Best shot of the year: A motorcycle tops a rise on a lonely road in sagebrush country, followed (though not, strictly, pursued) a beat later by a police car. The timing of the vehicles’ apparition; the casual left-to-right pan that [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 29, January/February 1974] • The death of Slim Pickens in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: “Knock knock knockin’ on Heaven’s door”… • The cut from Calvero the performer staring out at an empty theatre to Calvero the man sitting on his bed in the night, staring into the camera [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 60-61, February 1979] • The American Friend: Jonathan Zimmerman (Bruno Ganz) removes a sheet of gold leaf from its packing, lets it fall shivering onto his hand, blows it snug like a second skin, then uses that hand to seize the telephone receiver and make the call that will commit [...]
[Originally published in Film Comment Volume 30 Number 1, January/February 1994, reprinted by permission] • Willing his warmest fantasy—Ellen Olenska’s embrace—into motion behind him, Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) gazes out at a window-framed winter’s cape along the Hudson: the aesthetics of desire in The Age of Innocence… • The one that got away in Short [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 20, January 1973] • Le Boucher: a flock of chickens pecking among the leaves in foreground; beyond, frenzied activity at the police station, and we know another grisly murder has come to punctuate, but curiously not to disturb, life in this small French village… • Albert Finney’s exquisite gumshoe patter [...]
[Originally published in Film Comment Volume 27 Number 1, January/February 1991, reprinted by permission] • The hat in the forest, Miller’s Crossing… • GoodFellas: The sheer, abstract, utterly genuine terror of the warehouse at the end of the block, where Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) wants Karen (Lorraine Bracco) to stop in and pick out [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] • The Tree of Wooden Clogs: Interloping in the landowner’s courtyard, the young swain is frightened off into the night by the landowner himself, mysteriously banished from the musical soiree in his own parlor. In the barns, animals stir. A coachman waiting to drive his wealthy employers [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 10, January 1972] Recalled by Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy • Every moment Dominique Sanda’s feline beauty appears in The Conformist or, more specifically: Dominique Sanda’s Sternbergian entrance under a bare, harsh, deifying light bulb; Dominique Sanda’s hands-in-pockets slouch down the hallway, a cigarette dangling from her lips; Dominique [...]
As the shock of New Yorker’s announcement sinks in, so does the complicated legacy of New Yorker. In conversations with friends and colleagues who programmed college campus films series and commercial repertory calendars (back when such things were a vital part of a metropolitan city cinema landscape), we all recalled the high prices of New [...]
The reading of the Oscar nominations marks the unofficial (and long overdue) end to the season of Top Ten lists and year-in-review pieces and various awards bestowed by every group who wants to add their stamp to the passports of Oscar hopefuls. So as a postscript, I gather a few lists and remarks from Parallax [...]