Buñuel’s Spectre of Chance: The Phantom of Liberty

Atheist. Provocateur. Eccentric. Foot fetishist. Luis Buñuel was all of these things and more. A Surrealist through and through, Buñuel was able to subvert even mainstream cinema, often working within ridged studio systems to produce films that were still deeply personal, that reflected his own sensibilities as an artist. Buñuel was also a dead-on satirist who crafted [...]

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Summer Remains, Jayne Still Lingers

Jayne Mansfield always reminds me of summer, as strange as that sounds. Perhaps it’s all the photos of the smiling, phosphorescent leggy blonde in bikinis, often lounging by a pool, sunning herself, sultry and white-hot in the bright sunlight. Jayne Mansfield is the summer of Americana, of bygone eras that always appear glamorous in photos, always [...]

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The Marlowe in My Mind

Dick Powell is a glutton for punishment. More specifically, Powell’s Philip Marlowe is a glutton for punishment. In the 1944 film adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farwell, My Lovely, renamed Murder, My Sweet, Dick Powell played the part of the famous private detective as if it might be the last acting gig he ever got. He is [...]

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Blood, Booze, Mamet, Morricone: The Untouchables

The Untouchables (1987) Director: Brian De Palma   Barrels of Technicolor blood. Limitless rounds of ammunition. The melodramatic and the absurd. Innocence and clear-eyed reality. All these things run together in the universe that is Brian De Palma’s version of the late 50s TV show, The Untouchables. The violence is graphic, sometimes cartoonishly so, as [...]

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Darkness at the Fringe: Sam Fuller’s The Naked Kiss and Shock Corridor

Two of Sam Fuller’s best films, The Naked Kiss (1964) and Shock Corridor (1963), have recently received an overhaul from the Criterion Collection. Now, besides HD digital transfers, they both include the extras that fans of the Criterion Collection have come to expect: interviews, documentaries (Shock Corridor features the wonderful 1996 documentary The Typewriter, the Rifle and the Movie Camera) and [...]

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This is Halloween!

To kick things off for this year’s festivities, my previous review of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York is being included on Radiator Heaven’s John Carpenter Blogathon. While technically not brand-new, and not really a horror movie perse, this essay was a blast to write, and the John Capernter Blogathon is an amazing compendium of all things Carpenter, which, in my estimation, is a [...]

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Man with a Movie Camera: 50 Years of Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom

Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) is a nasty gem of a film. Obsessive, provocative, disturbing, deeply sad—Peeping Tom is all of these things and more. This year marks the 50 year anniversary of the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), but it also marks 50 years of Powell’s Peeping Tom, another film about a homicidal maniac, that was released just three months [...]

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The Money Shot: Dog Eat Dog

Dog Eat Dog (1964) Directors: Albert Zugsmith, Richard E. Cunha, Ray Nazarro, Gustav Gavrin “If you’re going to do something wrong, do it big, because the punishment is the same either way.” Jayne Mansfield The name Jayne Mansfield carries a lot of baggage. Like Sharon Tate, Jayne Mansfield conjures more than simply an actress that [...]

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From Russia With Love: Love and Death

Love and Death (1975) Director: Woody Allen In the illuminating collections of essays, Conversations with Woody Allen (2007) by New York Times and Vanity Fair writer, Eric Lax, Woody Allen discusses being at a sort of crossroads upon the completion of his film Sleeper (1973). He wants to do a departure film, what he refers to as a “real-person [...]

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The Pull of the Strange: Spider Baby

Spider Baby, Or The Maddest Story Ever Told (1968)* Director: Jack Hill It’s odd that I often forget how much I enjoy Jack Hill’s 1968 film, Spider Baby until I see it again. Years elapse and somehow I am able to disregard my own admiration for it. Well, maybe it’s not odd as much as an interesting phenomenon, really. Similarly there are those albums, [...]

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