“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” – Lawrence Walsh (played by Joe Manetell) Darkness on the edge of town A neo-noir masterpiece, Chinatown proves that director Roman Polanski, screenwriter Robert Towne, and producer Robert Evans can make a monumental film wherein they beat a genre until it’s a bloody, swollen, purple-bruised, and marred mess, then […]
Author: Shane Scott-Travis
Pulling Focus: Fantastic Planet (1973)
“Cinema is showing more and more. It’s a paranoid, dictatorial cinema. And it’s saying less and less. We need a schizophrenic cinema.” – René Laloux And now we wonder where we are Will there ever be another full-length animated feature quite as wonderfully weird and endlessly imaginative as René Laloux’s underground French classic Fantastic […]
Pulling Focus: Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974)
“Céline and Julie Go Boating is a do it yourself guide to rediscovering the delights of the street outside, and of the idiots all around you, here’s where we see Rivette first moving toward Shakespeare, and the world as all fools’ paradise.” – David Phelps Usually it began like this Playfully reflecting silent-era idiosyncrasy […]
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The 15 Best Horror Movies of 2016
2016 has been a great year for horror fans. Sure there were a few sequels nobody asked for, though a few of those were actually rather well done (the following list sidesteps James Wan’s The Conjuring 2 and Adam Wingard’s Blair Witch, but both films reward a late night watch), and there’s a few franchises […]
Pulling Focus: Le Samouraï (1967)
“Melville is God to me… [Le Samouraï is] the closest to a perfect movie that I have ever seen.” – John Woo Being and nothingness In a taut and lean 100 minutes Jean-Pierre Melville somehow manages to condense and distill 30 plus years of gangster movies, police procedurals, and film noir into an astonishing […]
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The 25 Best 21st Century Movies Made By Female Directors
It’s unfortunate in a way, that a list of this nature needs to be realized. Unfortunate because women are so often underrepresented in film, despite being some of the most exciting, and important ad rem auteurs currently making movies. Allow me to illustrate: ask anyone to name ten directors. If they’re able to, the odds […]