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2024

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The best and worst to be said about Francis Ford Coppola is that he’s a compulsive reviser of his own self-portraits — not only when it comes to rereleasing new versions of his GODFATHER films, APOCALYPSE NOW, and THE COTTON CLUB, but even when it comes to his dropping and then reintroducing the ‘Ford’ in Francis Ford Coppola.

Part of what’s both fascinating and frustrating about his most ambitious and audacious film, developed over more than four decades, is the…

1991

Watched 10 Jan 1992

David Cronenberg’s first masterpiece since VIDEODROME breaks every rule in the book when it comes to adapting a literary classic — perhaps ON NAKED LUNCH would be a more accurate title — but justifies every transgression with its artistry and sheer audacity. Adapted not only from William S. Burroughs’s free-for novel but also from several other Burroughs works (e.g., Exterminator and the introduction to Queer), it pares away all the social satire and everything that might qualify as celebration of…

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1997

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I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won’t contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That’s what gives the theatre meaning: when it becomes a social act.

—Orson Welles, 1938

Much of what’s been called innovative in the art of movies over the past half century has at first been seen by part of the audience as boring…

2023

Watched 23 Jul 2023

I have no current plans to see OPPENHEIMER and I’m already looking forward to seeing BARBIE a second time. What’s infuriating about the usual press shorthand for this duo — including The Economist‘s — is the assumption that the former is “realist” and “adult” whereas the latter must be “escapist” and “childish”. But what if the reverse is true?

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