WAR DOGS
Skip “War Dogs, and see Werner Herzog’s Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World” instead. At least there you…
War
THE LAST FACE — CANNES 2016
At its Cannes press screening it was clear from its cheesy opening scroll, about “love between a man and a…
WHISKEY TANGO FOXTROT
Comedy, Current Affairs, Film, FOUR STARS, Military Procedural, Political Satire, Reviews Blog, War, Women's Cinema
“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” (a.k.a. WTF) is such a bizarre title for a movie that it seems unlikely audiences will flock…
SON OF SAUL — CANNES 2015
Under Hungarian filmmaker Laszlo Nemes’s direction, Röhrig’s portrayal of a desperate man hanging onto the thinnest shred of humanity proves…
Abby Martin: The Empire Files — The Rise of History’s Biggest Empire
Abby Martin: The Empire Files — The Rise of History’s Biggest Empire
AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS — THE CRITERION COLLECTION
Capsules Blog, Classic Cinema, Coming-of-Age, Criterion Collection, FIVE STARS, French Cinema, Video Essay, War
Louis Malle’s semi-autobiographical rendering of his wartime youth, partially spent in a private Catholic boarding school in Nazi-occupied France, haunts…
HOTEL TERMINUS — CLASSIC FILM PICK
“Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie” is an exhaustive documentary about the “Butcher of Lyon,” a notoriously…
AMERICAN SNIPER
“American Sniper” is an artless nuance-free hate piece built on insultingly unsound narrative ground. Cole Smithey.
A SERBIAN FILM — CLASSIC FILM PICK
Banned Films, Capsules Blog, Classic Cinema, FOUR STARS, Horror, Porn, Serbian Cinema, sex, SHOCKTOBER!, Social Satire, Transgressive Cinema, War
Co-writer/director Srđan Spasojević plays hardball on the field of transgressive cinema in one of the most banned films in modern…
THE IMITATION GAME
Genius mathematician Alan Turning finally takes center stage as the father of the modern computer, an unsung British hero of…
FURY
Writer/director David Ayer’s World War II drama is a gritty European-styled coming-of-age picture that reminds us how much the nature…
ILSA: SHE WOLF OF THE SS — CLASSIC FILM PICK
BDSM, Capsules Blog, Classic Cinema, Cult Film, FIVE STARS, sex, Sexploitation, SHOCKTOBER!, Video Essay, War, War Fantasy, Women's Cinema
Don Edmonds’s 1975 classic “Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS” is one of the most outrageous additions to the sexploitation…
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR — THE CRITERION COLLECTION
Capsules Blog, Classic Cinema, Criterion Collection, FIVE STARS, French Cinema, New York Film Festival, Nouvelle Vague, Politics, Video Essay, War
Alain Resnais’s early addition to the Nouvelle Vague cannon finds his pair of culturally diverse lovers of rising from the…
THE CRANES ARE FLYING — THE CRITERION COLLECTION
“The Cranes Are Flying” benefits greatly from Tatyana Samoylova’s sturdy performance; her youthful beauty shifts from soft to hard over…
ASHES AND DIAMONDS — THE CRITERION COLLECTION
Capsules Blog, Classic Cinema, Criterion Collection, FIVE STARS, Polish Cinema, Video Essay, War, Women's Cinema
The final installment in Andrzej Wajda’s war trilogy — following “A Generation” (1954) and “Kanal” (1956) — is a coolly…
TAXI DRIVER — CLASSIC FILM PICK
Capsules Blog, Classic Cinema, Crime Drama, Dystopia, Exploitation, FIVE STARS, Horror, Political Satire, Porn, sex, Sexploitation, SHOCKTOBER!, Social Satire, Transgressive Cinema, Video Essay, War, Women's Cinema
So much of American popular culture, and modern Cinema’s urban aesthetic, owes a debt to Martin Scorsese’s groundbreaking fourth feature…
DIRTY WARS
“American Al Qaeda” — you might think the inflammatory label refers to turncoat U.S. citizens that have travelled abroad in…
BIG WEDNESDAY — CLASSIC FILM PICK
American Independent, Capsules Blog, Classic Cinema, Drama, FIVE STARS, Social Satire, Surfing, Video Essay, War
Milius constantly revisits the ocean’s churning surf as a literal and metaphoric yardstick to underscore the movie’s themes of personal…
COLE SMITHEY’S CLASSIC CINEMA
