Movies of ideas are so rare these days that you have to go out of your way to find them, and that can mean overcoming your own prejudices.  Mainstream films with ideas are rarer still, so I had to put my bias against CGI-loaded sci-fi blockbusters when I read about Alex Garland’s directorial debut, Ex Machina.  It’s a movie that posits itself ( Read more... )

When you have dedicated your life to becoming a professional, it isn’t that hard to pick up an old skill, no matter how long it’s been since you exercised it.  Much has been made of George Miller’s advancing age (he’s almost twice as old as a typical action film director, and probably four times as a typical action film viewer), and of the fact ( Read more... )

Quickly, now: name one good filmmaker who started out making music videos.

Not bad, not bad. Now, just as quickly: name one good filmmaker who, after making it in feature films, went back and made more music videos.

Wasn’t as easy, was it? And if you’re looking for a reason why, it’s not because music videos pay less. It’s because music videos are ( Read more... )

Slavery, it has been properly observed, is America’s original sin.  It is our first and foremost crime, the most adjacent cause of our civil war, and the source of the racial poison that continues to choke us today.  It is, if this can be said in a way that does not invite outrage and hyperbole, our Holocaust:  a mobile disaster that wreaks its ( Read more... )

Hetty Green was one of the first women to make a killing in stocks.  The heir to a considerable whaling fortune, the dour and grim New England Quaker increased her net worth more than tenfold with canny investments in everything from real estate to railroads to war bonds, and when she died in 1916, she was the richest woman the world had ever seen ( Read more... )

Even if you’d never heard of him before, you’d know from seeing Spike Jonze’s latest, Her, that he isn’t a first-time director.  Visually speaking, it’s powerfully effective, verging on masterful; he manages to set up almost every shot, even relatively inconsequential place-setting ones, in the most precise manner to deliver whatever mood he’s ( Read more... )

1.  The Maltese Falcon (Warner Bros., October 3, 1941; John Huston, dir.)

2.  This Gun for Hire (Paramount, May 13, 1942; Frank Tuttle, dir.)

3.  Double Indemnity (Paramount, September 6, 1944; Billy Wilder, dir.)

4.  Laura (20th Century FOX, October 11, 1944; Otto Preminger, dir.)

5.  Murder, My Sweet (RKO Radio Pictures, December 18, 1944); ( Read more... )

Clifford Odets had a curious, and tragic, Hollywood career.  Younger critics may know him less for his Hollywood product than for the savage parody of him assayed by the Coen Brothers in Barton Fink; there, they focused on the highfalutin young socialist-realist that he was, and not the embittered cynic he became - that, presumably, will be the ( Read more... )

In 1978, as I applied for film studies at the University of Illinois, my father expressed his disapproval. He quoted me a statistic: “Every year, 50,000 performers compete for 200 available roles on Broadway.” Still, I went against his advice and boarded a flight to the U.S. Since then, my father and I have had a strained relationship. In the last ( Read more... )

Greetings, new recruit of the Japanese Defense Force’s Giant Radioactive Monster Battalion!

No doubt that you, as a citizen of our great nation, have been raised with many colorful tales of the heroic struggles your predecessors in the G.R.M.B. fought in the 1950s and 1960s.  Perhaps this even influenced your decision to join.  Well, believe us:  ( Read more... )