“[Dead Man] is the Western Andrei Tarkovsky wanted to make.” – J. Hoberman The Place of Dead Roads Ohio-born Indie auteur Jim Jarmusch refurbishes the black-and-white Western the way a 19th century Native American might see it––as a murderous and genocidal head trip heralding the deadly homecoming of capitalism. Woven into the light threads […]
Year: 2016
- Features
- ...
The 20 Best Japanese Films of The 1980s
The decline of the major studios that had started in the previous decade continued in the 80s, with Toho, Toei, Nikkatsu, and Shochiku barely hanging on. The lack of funds started a new trend, the direct-to-video productions, that drew many new artists due to the creative freedom it offered. Akira Kurosawa continued shooting masterpieces, while […]
Pulling Focus: The Limey (1999)
“I respect my audience, and I assume they come to the theatre with a certain level of intelligence, but I don’t pander to them. I feel like, ‘Look, I’m going to take you somewhere, you can go or not go, but here is where we’re going’. I like that attitude when I see movies.” – […]
- Features
- ...
10 Reasons Why Brian De Palma is One of the Most Underrated American Filmmakers Ever
One of the most controversial American directors in the history of cinema, Brian Russell De Palma also remains one of the most divisive and poorly understood. Part of the influential New Hollywood wave of filmmakers, De Palma has been perfecting polemical and exhilarating cinema since the 1960s. To his critics he’s been labelled a misogynistic […]
- Features
- ...
10 Great 2016 Movies Too Weird for the Oscars
Every good movie fan knows that the Oscars are a flawed award ceremony at best, and a total travesty at worst. As the year draws to a close, however, speculation about who’s going to grab more nominations and, later, more statuettes at the Academy Awards is inevitable. Let’s distance ourselves from that for a moment, […]
- Features
- ...
15 Great Movies Influenced by the Paintings of Michelangelo Caravaggio
In July 1597, a barber named Luca testified in court in a case of a missing dagger and cloak, he said: “This painter is a stocky young man…with a thin black beard, thick eyebrows and black eyes, who goes dressed all in black, in a rather disorderly fashion, wearing a black hose that is a […]