Film #20: Repulsion

(The above poster design is an astounding unofficial graphic for Repulsion created by +Pemo+ who, at the time of its making, was a student at FADU-UBA in Buenos Aries. Check out more of his amazing collages: go to www.flickr.com and search for +Pemo+. And click on the above image for a clearer view of its perfect copy.)If I were powerful enough to go poof! and instantly make one movie on this

Film #19: Last Night at the Alamo

Last Night at the Alamo, the late Eagle Pennell's seminal indie film from 1983, and one of the first hits at the Sundance Film Festival (then known as the USA Film Festival), is a boisterous, ultimately pitiful portrait of a doomed Houston bar's alcohol-sodden denizens. It takes its place alongside Barfly, Trees Lounge and Husbands as an unshowered, unshaven scetch of loud-mouthed drunks, so if

Film #18: The Beguiled

In 1971, Clint Eastwood was dangerously, fabulously nearing superstardom. He'd long since completed the "Man With No Name" trilogy--A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly--with Italian director Sergio Leone. But he hadn't yet gone supernova with his role as the unorthodox San Francisco cop "Dirty" Harry Callahan. That's probably why he and his other

Film #17: The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl

If you've ever seen Triumph of the Will or Olympia, you've probably wondered about their mysterious, reclusive maker. Leni Riefenstahl rose to prominence in pre-Nazi Germany with her strapping, sexy starring roles in Arnold Fanck's heroic "mountain" movies. Having given up acting in 1933, she resolved to turn her energies to directing films. Her reading of Adolf H.'s prison memoir Mein Kamph was

Film #16: Tales From The Crypt (1972)

Most people know Tales From The Crypt as an 80s/90s cable TV show in the Twilight Zone / Creepshow vein -- sometimes scary, very jokey, with an animatronic near-skeleton as its host. Those more familiar with this version of the classic, famously-banned 1950s EC horror comics probably aren't even aware that it was previously filmed, ever so slightly more earnestly than maybe was needed, in 1972.

R.I.P. Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)

One of my favorite notable people died the other day--in fact, the very day I unknowingly, maybe psychically, posted a comment about viewers whom I feel incorrectly judge my favorite and, frankly, the best movie of all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction/fact writer who co-authored the script to 2001 with Stanley Kubrick, and then wrote the novel around the

Film #15: The Gods of Times Square

In its pre-cleanup days, the Times Square area in New York City was a place of vague contradictions. They'd be creeps streaming out of the jerk-off palaces as the melancholy mop-up guy got ready for another swabbing of the booths. Down the street, at one of the broken-down but strangely opulent all-nite movie houses, Lady Terminator would be playing on a double bill with Killer Condom. Two

Film #14: Advise and Consent

I have to comment on the Elliot Spitzer prostitution scandal. I once respected Spitzer, mainly for calling radio stations out on taking payola for playing tons of bad songs over the past decade or so. With that, I was just glad to get an explanation for the unexplainable and some measure of vengeance for "Who Let The Dogs Out?" or whatever. But then, he started acting like an asshole, telling

Film #13: Safe

Everyone who hears me describe the quiet but terrifying film Safe as a horror film always gives me a lot of gas. (snicker!) “Safe isn’t a horror movie, it’s a blah blah blah!” Well, I’m sorry, but yes, it is a horror film--an extremely modern one, one perhaps way ahead of its time, but a horror film nonetheless. I don't get why some people can't see it. I mean, not all horror movies have monsters

Defending 2001

2001: A Space Odyssey is my favorite movie. Those real cinemaniacs out there will totally empathize with this, while the people who didn't understand the film or whose attentions drifted away while watching it will be baffled at the logic of my tastes. They'll say "Ewww, it's so boring" or--like I heard my dad say when I was a small child--"What the hell? There was a baby floating in space at the

Film #12: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

Certainly, few TV series in history have been poured over more than Twin Peaks. Without it, there probably would've been no Sopranos, Lost, 24, or Six Feet Under. Fans of director/writer David Lynch, and of great television have inspected each frame of its always enthralling, often frustrating 29 episodes, scrambling for clues to a myriad of mysteries posed by its hundred-some-odd characters. Who

Here I Come to Save The Day: Andy Kaufman on DVD and The Problem with Bio-Pics

It's a hard thing to pull off, the filmed biography--harder than ever, probably. If a life is exciting enough to spawn cinematic translation, then I’m sure—via the number of middling bio-pics I’ve seen--that the directorial temptation is to simply, one by one, dramatize those events that made the life portrayed so special in the first place. Do this and, hey, you got yerself a movie. These “They

Film #11: Ed Wood

Lessee now...bio-pics about filmmakers. I dunno what took moviemakers so long to get around to attacking this subject---doesn't make sense, given how they make their lettuce. But as far as I can tell, Clint Eastwood's 1990 film White Hunter, Black Heart seems to have come first, surprisingly enough. It may have cloaked its main character with the name "John Wilson," but it obviously and

Film #10: Black Christmas (१९७४)

I’ve always contended that John Carpenter’s 1978 film Halloween stole this movie’s place as the progenitor of the slasher genre. The 1974 Canadian shocker Black Christmas is classier, scarier, and nicer to look at than any other slasher film out there (with Carpenter's movie coming in a close second). The story is familiar: an escaped killer sneaks into the attic of a sorority house during

Film #9: Targets

It's time for us to rethink what constitutes a horror film, especially in this time of exquisitely poured-over daily bloodbaths. I know that, in literary circles, the horror genre has split into “fantasy horror”--Frankenstein, Dracula, ghosts and the sort--and “modern horror,” which considers serial killers, madmen and mass murderers. But why doesn’t this distinction exist as strictly for movies?

Film #8: The Innocents

In 1961, British director Jack Clayton delivered one of the greatest horror movies ever made--the ghost story to best all ghost stories. His exquisite adaptation of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw is boldly frightening, sexually suggestive, and beautifully shot (by Freddie Francis). Deborah Kerr, in perhaps her finest performance, plays a repressed nanny whose new charge--taking care of two

Film #7: Night Moves

With Night Moves, director Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde, The Miracle Worker) emerged with his best effort since 1970's Little Big Man and, as he did in Coppola's The Conversation a few years earlier, star Gene Hackman marked his career with another outwardly strong, inwardly crippled character. This time he plays Harry Moseby, an emotionally distant former football star now operating as a