3-D “Gatsby”: Doo-Wack-a-Doo Up the Wazoo
Life is a cabaret, old sport, or maybe halftime at the Super Bowl in Baz Luhrmann’s overhyped and overheated 3D adaptation of “The Great Gatsby”—the fifth time Hollywood has taken on the 1925 F. Scott...
View ArticleLiberace Lives: “Behind the Candelabra” and Back from the Grave
Glitz on glitz. It would have been most Liberace-like had the TV premiere of Steven Soderbergh’s HBO production, the Liberace bio-pic “Behind the Candelabra,” been presaged by the announcement that...
View Article“The Bling Ring” Goes Wide: Whatever
“The Bling Ring,” which goes wide this weekend, didn’t get much respect when it had its world premiere last month in Cannes; nor has Sofia Coppola’s fifth feature proved to be a critical darling. Read...
View ArticlePedro’s “So Excited!”: Lighter Than Air
I don’t know what it says about Pedro Almódovar that, seen in a Manhattan screening room rather than in competition at Cannes or at the New York Film Festival, “I’m So Excited!” seems so much more...
View ArticleBack When New York City was “Fun”?
OK to plug my own show? If so, read on. “Fun City,” the series I programmed at the Museum of the Moving Image, includes 17 Hollywood features and one documentary shot on the streets and sidewalks of...
View ArticleWong Kar-Wai is “The Grandmaster”
Sorry to weigh in late on Wong Kar-Wai’s “The Grandmaster”—although regret is in part the subject of the film. Indeed, given the fact that there are at least three different “Grandmaster” cuts—the...
View Article“I Married a Witch”: Whatcha See, I Don’t Get
Rene Clair’s 1942 fantasy “I Married a Witch” has some distinguished artists among its fans. Jack Smith included it in the syllabus for a class he never ever came close to teaching; Guy Maddin writes a...
View ArticlePayne’s “Nebraska”: On the Road Again
Underachieving son (played against type by the comedian Will Forte) drives his near demented, alcohol sozzled old father (Bruce Dern) across the Midwest in search of a nonexistent pot of gold:...
View ArticleNYFCC Keeps Hustlin’
I’ll admit to a certain surprise that the big winner at the New York Film Critics Circle turned out to be neither “12 Years a Slave” nor “Inside Llewyn Davis”, but David O. Russell’s “American Hustle”...
View ArticleStuff for the Buff
Only hours left to shop. Herewith a few items for the serious cinephile that said sc is unlikely to yet have: 1) Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project (Criterion) is a pretty amazing grab-bag of...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....