Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine in Star Trek Into Darkness, for which I wrote a largely spoiler-free (although apparently the thing these days is to drop spoilers, and to care passionately, or something) review for MSN Movies. I liked it! Also: I confirm my status as a member of a spider web of Noah Baumbach confreres who share his warped Manhattan/Brooklyn boho-bourgeoisie values by giving a positive review to Frances Ha. So sue me. Continue reading

So. I've submitted the manuscript of Anatomy of an Actor: Robert De Niro to the editors at the book publishing arm of Cahiers du Cinema. The book is part of a series (Karina Longworth's consideration of Al Pacino is out soon, and Longworth has started a Tumblr devoted to the book; I might do same myself, or something, when the time is appropriate and I Oh Christ do I have to think about it right... Continue reading

Either that or "One-Two-Three Green Light." These are the jokes, folk. My review of The Great Gatsby, for MSN Movies. Continue reading

From Harryhausen's unfinished Evolution of the World, late '30s to 1940. Featured on the indispensible DVD set Ray Harryhausen: The Early Years Collection. I cannot speak for everyone who fell in love with the movies at an early age. Still, it stands to reason that what enchanted us about movies in our tender years had little to do with the way that cinema could convey psychological nuance, or even necessarily how distinctively it could convey... Continue reading

I wasn't all that crazy about Iron Man 3, but my friend Tom Carson really liked it. I point this out not because it's so rare that Tom and I disagree—we disagree, at times avidly, about a lot of stuff. What I did find interesting is that, if you look at both reviews (of which Tom's is the better and more tightly written), you don't get that "did those two even see the same movie?"... Continue reading

Penn Badgely and Imogen Poots I have a rather amusing, I guess, conflict that made it questionable for me to write about this movie in a professional context, which is that a very dear friend of mine in real life is portrayed as a character therein. Frank Wood, a stage actor of good repute, portrays the musician Gary Lucas, who I got palsy pal-sy with after reviewing a show of his in the late 1980s,... Continue reading

The great Durbin in Robert Siodmak's 1944 masterwork Christmas Holiday, which I wrote about at greater length here. Like Garbo, like Brigitte Helm, not quite like Luise Rainer (who is over 100 and still walks among us), Durbin retired and stayed retired; her abandonment of showbiz is the linchpin of a wickedly amusing (and unsourced) anecdote the late Gore Vidal relates in his memoir Palimpsest: "Deanna Durbin [was] a child soprano and competitor of Judy... Continue reading

But Professor Skizzen had noticed that God was always excused. Any and every God. For any and every thing. A tornado might trash a trailer park and the poor wretches who survived would think to thank him for sparing them, as well as preserving a children's plate and one photo of the family grinning at the Falls asif they'd pushed the water over by themselves. Perhaps the Gods alternated fucking off. "I won't interfere with... Continue reading

One of the things I admire about Michael Bay's Pain & Gain is how it functions as a critique of itself. "Bosh," some have replied to my tentative musings in this area, "Bay's not that sophisticated a filmmaker." I dunno, or, more to the point, I don't believe that he has to be in order for the film to be imbued with this quality. I do a bit more theorizing in my review for MSN... Continue reading

1) Psychedelic pink works; 2) while Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton are not names you necessarily associate with the condition, amour fou is where you find it. Continue reading

I was working on a March Consumer Guide when I got called up to do the De Niro book. I duly accepted and submerged in De Niro studies, and left you all relatively blogless for over a month. Well. Now I’m up for air…and feeling rather like Steve Brody at the end of the Arthur-Davis-directed Looney Tune “Bowery Bugs,” when the lug is all like “Everybody’s turning in to rabbits!” only in my case it’s... Continue reading

So I wonder if Bardem's all like, "Great, I finally get to have a normal hairstyle in a movie and I'm playing a priest, figures." Probably not. I'm pretty high on Terrence Malick's To The Wonder, but I also have a theory about it. Details in my review for MSN Movies. 42 is no great shakes, but it's a little rich, all the scolding it's getting from folks I had no idea were such baseball... Continue reading

When I composed this obit to put in the MSN Movies file, I did so hoping it wouldn't have to go up for a good long while. I didn't get my wish. I did not read Roger as voraciously as a lot of my colleagues did. And I can't say he was a seminal influence on me as a writer. I was already well on my way (in my own mind at least) with respect... Continue reading

My old friend Joseph Failla emails: "With all the distractions you have with assignments and deadlines, you may have missed that today is the 45th anniversary of the opening of the roadshow engagement of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY at the now long gone Capitol Theatre in New York City. Beginning on April 3rd 1968 (although the film had it's world premiere the evening before in Washington D.C.) 2001 ran for a total of 24 weeks... Continue reading

Gun and Amy Seimetz in Upstream Color, the best of the three movies I review for MSN Movies this week. The other two are enjoyable slices of sensationalism: Trance, and a surprisingly impolite (to the audience, not the source material) remake of Evil Dead. Continue reading

Diana Lorys in Gritos en la noche (The Awful Dr. Orloff), 1964. Shirley Eaton in The Girl From Rio, 1969. Janine Reynaud in Succubus, 1969. Dennis Price and Maria Rohm in Venus In Furs, 1969. Howard Vernon in Countess Perverse, 1973. Lina Romay in Lorna The Exorcist, 1974. "Not an untalented man, by the way," Christopher Lee said to me apropos Jess Franco, whose name I had the mild temerity to bring up when I... Continue reading

I liked G.I. Joe: Retaliation quite a bit better thant The Place Beyond The Pines, both of which I review for MSN Movies, as you might infer. (Click on the link-things!) Weirder things have happened. Looking at the above still, in which the blurry one is Adrianne Palicki, I shudder to think what the very-preoccupied-with-masculinity Pines director Derek Cianfrance would do with Bruce Willis if he ever got to his very-preoccupied-with-masculinity mitts on him. I... Continue reading

Well, now the paperwork is more or less done and the work is well underway, I feel less antsy about publicly disucssing the book I'm working on. The commission is from Cahiers du Cinema, for an entry in its Anatomy of An Actor series. These are hardcover editions, beautifully designed and copiously illustrated, in which a particular screen performer's body of work as a whole is examined through the critical prism of ten specific roles/performances.... Continue reading

That's my Iceland-bought sweater I'm sporting, pretty sweet, huh? Continue reading

Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Rachel Korine and Vanessa Hudgens say "Oh hai." FROM JAIL. Review here. For MSN Movies. But wait, there's more: The surprisingly good Admission and the unsuprisingly mediocre Olympus Has Fallen. For the latter I was gonna make a "what does Antoine Fuqua have against Koreans" joke with a punchline referring to Do The Right Thing, but I wussed out. This is as good a place as any to put a service... Continue reading

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. Ginger and Rosa. Fear not. Spring Breakers soon. Promise. Continue reading

In commemoration of my friend Tom Carson's engaging review of Mr. Davis' latest book, The Soundtrack Of My Life, I relate this anecdote. I guess it was 1994. I had been a pop music columnist for the New York Daily News for a while, so I got asked to a bunch of music events, but by this time I don't think I had the column any more. Nevertheless, I got an invite to a very... Continue reading

I was honored to be asked to write this essay on Martin Scorsese for Humanities magazine, in commemoration of Scorsese's delivering the 2013 Jefferson Lecture in Humanities. I'm happy with how it came out. Hope you enjoy it. Continue reading

Maria Falconetti in Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). This is how the frame appears in the current Eureka!/Masters of Cinema Blu-ray disc edition of the film. Below, the image before restoration. I first heard from James White, the British film restoration maestro, a few years back, around the time the below-mentioned ITV Blu-ray of Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus came out in Britain. White and I reconnected around last year's... Continue reading

You know, I'm actually pretty high on Skyfall, but jeez, people... Continue reading