Parallax View

[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 [...]

Jean Renoir’s world-view, famously stated by a character the director played in The Rules of the Game (1939), is that “Everyone has his reasons.” Although Renoir recognized the corollary—that some reasons are better than others—he always understood the complex motivations that drive human actions. And that understanding, in turn, helped him to animate his characters—sympathetic [...]

[This essay was originally published in an issue of Steadycam magazine devoted to the cinema of Frank Borzage.] Quentin Tarantino once warned a movie palace full of his fans not to “sophisticate yourselves out of feeling.” It’s a good credo to bear in mind while watching movies by Frank Borzage. When I recently plunged into [...]