American director Jules Dassin’s 1955 French gangster flick Rififi (Thursday, March 17, Dryden Theatre, 8 p.m., 271-4090) is one of those movies that inspired film geeks, or what the French call geeques du cinema (no, they don’t), long before anyone ever heard of one. Its influence is apparent in films by contemporaries like Jean-Pierre Melville, […]
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Now let’s see you make a movie
Undoubtedly the most purely cinematic novelist writing today, the prolific Elmore Leonard shares a long history with Hollywood. An experienced scriptwriter himself, his novels move and jump like screenplays, marked by quick cuts, short scenes, the deft deployment of dialogue, an efficient establishing of location, minimal authorial intrusion, and a fidelity to the surfaces of […]
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Inward grace and questionable taste
“This sucks.” Edward DeBonis hangs up the phone after calling a list of churches and inquiring about the possibility of marrying the person he loves with the blessing of the faith in which he worships. The conclusion is an inevitable one, however, since the churches are Catholic and the name of Edward’s intended is Vincent. […]
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A daring attempt at a problematic play
The first theatrical film of The Merchant of Venice, which took so long to arrive here it might well have been transported by gondola, reminds us of the difficulties accompanying the production of a volatile and controversial work in our time. Whatever its merits, over the span of centuries, and especially in an age that […]
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To have and have not
Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai obviously knows what it is to yearn. Be it a longing for someone or something, or even the wish to be free from such an unbearable desire, Wong’s films are infused with a melancholy ache that other filmmakers don’t convey nearly as well. And movies like that are my kryptonite. […]
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The Hollywood think is one glittery rut
Once again, to the delight of publicists, entertainment reporters, clothing designers, and the various people who really make movies — bankers, lawyers, agents, accountants, etc. — next Sunday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents its annual awards ceremony, more familiarly known as Oscar night. The moment represents the film industry’s own depthless […]
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Rolling out the beige carpet
It went largely unnoticed by most media outlets, but the 1st Annual Daynas were held recently in my tiny apartment. It was a rather casual affair — no sequins or tuxes allowed, and the invitees and I dined on tuna sandwiches, nacho cheese Doritos, and Ovaltine (the chocolate malt kind). I didn’t have any swanky […]
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Almodóvar’s latest: sexual confusion
A number of commentators observed in Pedro Almodóvar’s last movie — the eccentric, ambiguous, essentially comic Talk to Her — indications of some softening and mellowing, like some exotic melon, with an unwonted sense of sweetness and sympathy. Although his work in fact often displays a blatant overripeness, a fragrant decadence that the director at […]
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Hell on earth and in France
The absurd reality that Keanu Reeves has been able to get good jobs in Tinseltown for the last 20 years makes him the luckiest man alive. Mark Ruffalo has that brooding stoner doll thing down cold at this point and he can truly act – why not hire him instead? When Reeves’ movies tank […]
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Opening the door to everybody’s worst fear
A decade ago, the news trickled in, accompanied by images of unparalleled savagery, of massacres in a country few people in the West had ever heard of, on a continent few cared about, and involving class, tribal, and ethnic tensions almost nobody comprehended. In the midst of one of those messy and complicated civil wars […]
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The more taboo the subject, the fuller the theater
We’re all grown-ups here, so I’m going to be blunt: There’s really only one reason anyone would go see a controversial film in which a hot French model and Italy’s most famous male porn star spend four nights sans clothes at a remote waterfront chateau. Yeah, you could argue with me and claim that you’re […]
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City’s choice: film
You shouldn’t expect to find so much possibility hidden in a severed human ear. But when that ear’s a prop in a David Lynch film, there’s nothing stopping it from becoming the key to hell. Much has been made of Lynch’s 1986 movie Blue Velvet (Wednesday, February 9, Dryden Theatre, 900 East Avenue, 8 p.m., […]
