# Parallax View

> Movie Views from Seattle

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## Posts

- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of May 1](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-may-1/): “When I attempt to describe my years in Paris, no one believes me, I can tell. It was too Hollywood-dream perfect. Here is Nadja coming out of the student restaurant, minding her own business, and who should appear next but Eric Rohmer who stops her (“Why you of all people?” they ask) and within minutes
- [Notes on Abel Gance's 'Napoleon'](https://parallax-view.org/notes-on-abel-gances-napoleon/): For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon III, which runs from Sunday, May 13 through Friday, May 18, 2012, is dedicated to helping the National Film Preservation Foundation raise money to score and stream the recently unearthed reels of The White Shadow, a silent film from director Graham Cutts that young Alfred Hitchcock worked
- [Ralph Bakshi on 'Wizards' at 35](https://parallax-view.org/watching-with-ralph-bakshi-director-of-wizards/): A 2012 interview with Ralph Bakshi discussing his 1977 amimated classic 'Wizards' on its 35th anniversary.
- [Marjane Satrapi on 'Persepolis'](https://parallax-view.org/marjane-satrapi-on-persepolis/): Marjane Satrapi passed away this on June 4, 2026—a year after the death of her husband—at the age of 56. I interviewed Ms. Satrapi at the end of 2007, while she was promoting the animated feature Persepolis, based on her autobiographical graphic novel. Born and raised in Iran but educated in Vienna, Marjane Satrapi grew
- [San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2026](https://parallax-view.org/san-francisco-silent-film-festival-2026/): Sean Axmaker's coverage of the 2026 edition of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
- [Yasujiro Ozu on TCM in May](https://parallax-view.org/yasujiro-ozu-on-tcm-in-may/): Turner Classic Movies screens 20 features by the Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu in May. Sean Axmaker surveys the series.
- [Roger Corman on TCM in April](https://parallax-view.org/roger-corman-on-tcm-in-april/): Roger Corman left behind a legacy unmatched by filmmakers of his (or, for that matter, any) generation when he passed away in 2024 at the age of 98. In addition to directing over 50 films, he produced almost 500 features, created and ran two production companies and hired young talent in all facets of the
- [Parallax View's Best of 2025](https://parallax-view.org/parallax-view-best-of-2025/): A belated welcome to 2026 with one last look at the best releases of 2025 as chosen by the individuals at Parallax View
- [Kevin Costner’s 'Open Range’ delivers the goods](https://parallax-view.org/kevin-costner-open-range-2003/): 'Open Range' is "deeply satisfying in ways that few movies are these days," writes Richard T. Jameson in his 2003 review.
- [Tender Mercies](https://parallax-view.org/tender-mercies-1983-robert-duvall/): "Robert Duvall gives one of the best, most fully realized performances ever seen in an American film," writes Rochard T. Jameson in his 1993 review of 'Tender Mercies.'
- [Review: The Great Santini](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-great-santini/): Richard T. Jameson's 1981 review of 'The Great Santini,' starring Robert Duvall and Blythe Danner, originally published in Movietone News 66-67.
- [Film Review: 'The Judge'](https://parallax-view.org/film-review-judge/): Leave out Robert Downey, Jr., and 'The Judge' looks like a painfully old-fashioned exercise in the Tradition of Quality.
- [Review: 'Breakout'](https://parallax-view.org/review-breakout/): Richard T. Jameson's 1975 review of 'Breakout' with Charles Bronson and Robert Duvall, originally published in Movietone News 42.
- [Out of the Past: The Rain People](https://parallax-view.org/out-of-the-past-the-rain-people/): Rick Hermann's 1974 review of Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Rain People,' originally published in Movietone News 33.
- [Trouble in Mind](https://parallax-view.org/trouble-in-mind-1985-alan-rudolph/): Richard Jameson's 1986 review of the Alan Rudolph film: "What no one will dispute is that 'Trouble in Mind' makes more exciting use of Seattle as a movie location than any other film ever shot here."
- [Review: Supervixens](https://parallax-view.org/review-supervixens/): Richard T. Jameson's 1975 review of Russ Meyer's 'Supervixens' from Movietone News #42.
- [San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2025](https://parallax-view.org/san-francisco-silent-film-festival-2025/): Sean Axmaker surveys the highlights of the 2025 San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
- [Review: 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore'](https://parallax-view.org/review-alice-doesnt-live-anymore/): Rick Hermann's 1975 review of Martin Scorsese's 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore': "'Alice's optimism is reflected in [Scorsese's] directorial generosity, his way of giving everyone a role and letting him leave his mark.
- [Review: Embryo](https://parallax-view.org/review-embryo/): Robert C. Cumbow's 1976 review of 'Embryo,' originally published in Movietone News 51.
- ['Annie Hall' - How the Woodman's World Got Larger](https://parallax-view.org/annie-hall-how-the-woodmans-world-got-larger/): Richard T. Jameson's 1977 review of Woody Allen's 'Annie Hall,' originally published in Seattle Weekly: "Annie Hall is far and away the best movie Woody Allen has made. '
- [Review: Annie Hall](https://parallax-view.org/review-annie-hall/): Robert C. Cumbow's 1977 review of Woody Allen's 'Annie Hall,' originally published in Movietone News 54.
- [Review: Looking for Mr. Goodbar](https://parallax-view.org/review-looking-for-mr-goodbar/): Robert C. Cumbow's 1978 review of 'Looking for Mr. Goodbar,' originally published in Movietone News 57.
- [Review: Interiors](https://parallax-view.org/review-interiors/): Robert C. Cumbow's 1979 review of Woody Allen's 'Interiors,' originally published in Movietone News No, 60-61
- [East Egg, West Egg, Rotten Egg: 'The Great Gatsby'](https://parallax-view.org/east-egg-west-egg-rotten-egg-great-gatsby/): The way to approach 'The Great Gatsby' is to prepare to be disappointed. If you have no illusion that the film is going to be an effective representation of the novel, then far from being disappointed, you may be pleasantly surprised.
- [Review: Ordinary People](https://parallax-view.org/review-ordinary-people/): If we're never quite sure exactly whose problem we're dealing with in 'Ordinary People,' it's OK, because director Robert Redford isn't sure either.
- [2000 Eyes: The Legend of Bagger Vance](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-the-legend-of-bagger-vance/): [Written for Film.com] As an actor and director, Robert Redford seems sincerely and deeply drawn to American mythology, from the mystic fishermen of A River Runs Through It to those western archetypes the Sundance Kid and Jeremiah Johnson to that most sacred of literary mysteries, The Great Gatsby. Every minute of The Natural oozes with
- [Review: The Electric Horseman](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-electric-horseman/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Horse comes over the horizon and slants down into the golden valley, right there I figure Sydney Pollack auteur time, whoa up. I mean, if Sydney Pollack can be an auteur, it isn't worth being one. But he wants it, oh, he can taste it. He cranes,
- [Sublimities in transit: Steven Spielberg dreams another American Dream](https://parallax-view.org/the-terminal-sublimities-in-transit-steven-spielberg-dreams-another-american-dream/): Richard T. Jameson's review of Steven Spielberg's 'The Terminal,' originally published in 2004. "The film’s air of fairy tale or fable belies a shrewd talent for seeing beyond expectation..."
- [Review: 'The Three Days of the Condor'](https://parallax-view.org/review-three-days-condor-2/): Sydney Pollack restores a sense of individual importance, involvement, and ambiguity to a genre that has been debased by filmmakers almost as fast as the intelligence game itself by those soulless sentinels of American liberty in 'Three Days of the Condor.'
- [Review: The Great Waldo Pepper](https://parallax-view.org/review-great-waldo-pepper/): A good deal of 'The Great Waldo Pepper' is very pleasant to look at but the movie suffers from a breach of artistic faith.
- [Review: Jeremiah Johnson](https://parallax-view.org/review-jeremiah-johnson/): Robert Redford portrays Jeremiah Johnson as a kind of existential surrogate for all those who currently hanker after a return to nature, an escape hatch from the trap of modern existence.
- [Review: The Sting](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-sting/): Director George Roy Hill's whole approach to making movies is predicated on putting on a good—read thin but glittery—show. The insubstantiality of the Redford-Newman confidence game, its participants and paraphernalia, is exactly proportionate to that of the film itself.
- [Review: The Horse Whisperer](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-horse-whisperer/): Robert Redford's main casting decision, handing the central role to Kristin Scott Thomas, pays off. Indeed, with her quick eyes flashing, Scott Thomas brings much more to the part than the black-and-white conception of the character would suggest.
- [Review: The Conversation](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-conversation/): Rick Hermann's 1974 review of Francis Ford Coppola's Oscar-nominated seventies classic starring Gene Hackman.
- [Review: Night Moves](https://parallax-view.org/review-night-moves/): Rick Herrman's 1975 review of Arthur Penn's low-key neo-noir starring Gene Hackman, originally published in Movietone News 43.
- [Review: Scarecrow](https://parallax-view.org/review-scarecrow-1973/): Kathleen Murphy's 1973 review of Jerry Schatzberg's road movie drama starring Gene Hackman and Al Pacino, originally published in Movietone News 24.
- [Review: Zandy's Bride](https://parallax-view.org/review-zandys-bride/): Richard T. Jameson's review of Jan Troell's drama starring Gene Hackman and Liv Ullmann as settlers in old Monterey, originally published in Movietone News 34.
- [Review: 'Bite the Bullet'](https://parallax-view.org/review-bite-bullet/): Richard T. Jameson's 1975 review of the Richard Brooks western starring Gene Hackman, James Coburn, and Candice Bergen, originally published in Movietone News 42.
- [Review: French Connection II](https://parallax-view.org/review-french-connection-ii-2/): [Originally published in Movietone News 42, July 1975] I liked The French Connection a lot in 1971, but I'm rather afraid to look at it again because I think I remember most of what's there. Not that I don't remember many other films vividly, films I've no doubt I can revisit any number of times
- [Review: 'French Connection II'](https://parallax-view.org/review-french-connection-ii/): Robert Cumbow's 1975 review of the John Frankenheimer-directed sequel, originally published in Movietone News 43.
- [Parallax View's Best of 2024](https://parallax-view.org/parallax-view-best-of-2024/): Contributors to and friends of Parallax View share their top films of 2024, plus a few additional resources to celebrate the past year in cinema.
- [The Unseen 'Blue Velvet'](https://parallax-view.org/the-unseen-blue-velvet/): A look at the deleted scenes that David Lynch included as a supplement on the DVD special edition release.
- [Interview: David Lynch on 'Inland Empire' I - The Idea](https://parallax-view.org/interview-david-lynch-on-inland-empire-i-the-idea/): David Lynch, interviewed in 2007 while promoting his (then) new film 'Inland Empire' in Seattle.
- [Interview: David Lynch on 'Inland Empire' II - The DVD](https://parallax-view.org/interview-david-lynch-on-inland-empire-ii-the-dvd/): Back in 2007, in conjunction with the release of Inland Empire, I had the opportunity to interview David Lynch twice in the same year. This is the second of the two interviews, conducted over the phone and focused on the DVD release of Inland Empire, which he produced and distributed independently through his company Absurda.
- [Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round: David Lynch's 'Wild at Heart'](https://parallax-view.org/dead-heat-merry-go-round-david-lynchs-wild-heart/): [Originally published in Film Comment, November-December 1990] Back in the days when James Dean was only half a decade dead and Elvis Presley as many years famous, my best friend and I twice played hookey from high school to see Sidney Lumet's The Fugitive Kind. On screen in brooding black and white, Tennessee Williams' surreal
- [Lynch Mob: Happy Birthday to the Maverick Weaver of American Nightmares](https://parallax-view.org/lynch-mob-happy-birthday-to-the-maverick-weaver-of-american-nightmares/): [Originally published January 10, 2011] David Lynch, the once boyish maverick of underground visions and the nightmares under the façade of normalcy, turned 65 this week. A little older, a little grayer but still making films the only way he knows how: on his own terms. I had the good fortune to interview Lynch a
- [Review: Eraserhead](https://parallax-view.org/review-eraserhead/): [Originally published in Movietone News 58-59, August 1978] While an attendant whose deformed face and skin make him look like the Elephant Man pulls levers like those that start an amusement park ride, an ectoplasmic spermatozoon plunges squirming into a pool, making its way toward a globe that gradually crumbles, until we take the viewpoint
- [David Lynch Folds Space: Because He Is the Kwisatz Haderach!...](https://parallax-view.org/david-lynch-folds-space-because-he-is-the-kwisatz-haderach/): [Editor's Note: The essay below was first published on 16/11/2006 at 24LiesASecond, a now-defunct website, under the editorial guidance of James M. Moran (editor-in-chief) and Peet Gelderblom (founding editor).] The spice extends life. The spice expands consciousness. The spice is vital to space travel. The Spacing Guild and its Navigators, whom the spice has mutated
- [Summer of '90: 'Wild at Heart'](https://parallax-view.org/summer-of-90-wild-at-heart/): [originally published on The House Next Door on August 14, 2015] The power of David Lynch's Wild at Heart is the endurance of an Elvis Presley song (or two), the staying power of a children's movie, and the sight and sound of a match being struck: romantically mellow, wackily comic, and deadly, darkly serious. Lynch
- [Out of the Past: The Maltese Falcon](https://parallax-view.org/past-maltese-falcon/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] The Maltese Falcon showed up in the area recently, for the hundredth time. Hohum? Far from it! Let there be a hundred more! Huston's first film set the standard for his later work, a standard of excellence that has rarely been matched by his more recent films.
- [Review: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid](https://parallax-view.org/review-pat-garrett-and-billy-the-kid/): Richard T, Jameson's 1974 review of Sam Peckinpah's western: "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is thoroughly perverse in conception and realization—and in its refusal (several people have remarked it independently) to get out of one's skull the day after one has seen it, and the day after that."
- [Review: Blume in Love](https://parallax-view.org/review-blume-love/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] During one phase of their rising-and-falling marriage Susan Anspach says to George Segal, "We're always putting somebody down." One of the conspicuously consistent things about Paul Mazursky's three films as a director—Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, Alex in Wonderland, Blume in Love—is that he doesn't
- [Review: The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-bingo-long-traveling-all-stars-and-motor-kings/): Robert Cumbow's 1976 review from Movietone News 52: "[John] Badham has wrought an interesting episodic film whose real concern is the black self-image two decades before the major civil rights decisions of the Fifties."
- [Out of the Past: Le Samourai](https://parallax-view.org/out-of-the-past-le-samourai/): Ken Eisner's review from 1974: Admirers of this director will not be surprised to learn that the extraordinary impact of the film is minimally dependent upon mere plot.
- [Twenty-five years of SIFF](https://parallax-view.org/twenty-five-years-of-siff-seattle-weekly-1999/): [Originally published May 1999 in the Seattle Weekly] This year, the Seattle International Film Festival celebrates 25 years. OK, let’s be real—this is really only the 24th festival. Somewhere between 1987 (the 12th Annual SIFF) and 1988 (the 14th) we jumped a year: a leap festival, I suppose, but if skyscrapers can skip the 13th
- [San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2024: Finding Clara Bow, Swashbuckling Restorations, & More](https://parallax-view.org/san-francisco-silent-film-festival-2024/): For over 25 years, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival called the Castro Theatre home. With the iconic theater now closed for a year-plus-long renovation, SFSFF has relocated to the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, located in a beautiful park created for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition at the north edge of the Presidio. The
- [Parallax View's Best of 2023](https://parallax-view.org/parallax-view-best-of-2023/): We welcome 2024 with one last look back at the best releases of 2023. As most of us are no longer full-time critics, we haven’t had the same access to films as most film critics. Thus these are snapshots of what we have been able to see, and what impressed us over the last year.
- [Review: Black Christmas](https://parallax-view.org/review-black-christmas/): [Originally published in Movietone News 45, November 1975] Black Christmas starts to get interesting in the last two minutes. After a series of killings in a college-town sorority house at the beginning of the Christmas holidays, the supposed murderer, in a scene we don't actually get to see, has been done in by his own
- [Review: Black Christmas](https://parallax-view.org/review-black-christmas-2/): [Originally published in Movietone News 38, January 1975] "The Film Funding Corporation Limited in association with Vision IV" has produced a serviceable-enough Canadian low-budget shocker in Black Christmas and pitched it at the end-of-year trade. Unless I've missed some subtle subtext, the tie to Christmas is tenuous: an establishing shot of wassail seen through the
- ["Un Conte De Noel" ("A Christmas Tale"): The Messy Joys of Family](https://parallax-view.org/un-conte-de-noel-a-christmas-tale/): [originally published November 20, 2008] "We're in the middle of a midst of a myth and I don't know what myth it is."- Henri (Mathieu Amalric) In the opening of Arnaud Desplechin's Un Conte De Noel (A Christmas Tale), a wily and knotty and unendingly inventive drama of family dysfunction stirred up over a Christmas
- [Meet the Americans: John Doe and George Clooney - DVDs of the Week](https://parallax-view.org/meet-the-americans-john-doe-and-george-clooney-dvds-of-the-week/): [originally published December 28, 2010] Meet John Doe: 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition (VCI) Frank Capra's last feature before leaving Hollywood to contribute his filmmaking talents to the war effort is his most populist piece of social commentary, a cynical satire of a publicity stunt that turns into a popular political movement. Barbara Stanwyck is
- [Stranger on the Third Floor: Notes on the First Film Noir](https://parallax-view.org/stranger-on-the-third-floor-notes-on-the-first-film-noir/): Film noir historians trace the roots back to the silent era and the full flowering to the war years, but most tend to agree that the first true American film noir came in the otherwise modest package of an ambitious B-movie crime thriller from 1940. Before the hard-boiled world of suspicious private eyes, double-crossing dames
- [San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2023: One Last Silent Movie Party at the Castro Theatre?](https://parallax-view.org/san-francisco-silent-film-festival-2023/): The 26th San Francisco Silent Film Festival was another joyous gathering of silent cinema.
- ['Shrinking Man' reputation grows](https://parallax-view.org/shrinking-man-reputation-grows/): John Hartl explores the power and legacy of the 1957 science fiction classic from director Jack Arnold and writer Richard Matheson.
- [Abel Gance's 'Napoleon' - The Complete Masterpiece Debuts in America](https://parallax-view.org/abel-gances-napoleon/): On Sunday, October 20, 2001, on the final day of the 20th Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (the greatest, grandest silent film festival in the known universe), I boarded a vintage steam engine with a few hundred other silent movie-loving patrons, traveled from Sacile to Udine, filed into the Udine Opera House, took my nearly-front row
- [Blu-ray: 'The Earrings of Madame de...'](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-earrings-madame-de/): [originally published in October 2013, this review has been revived to honor Danielle Darrieux, who died this week at the age of 100 - ed.] The European films of Max Ophuls are elaborate dances of romance and seduction in a world of social constraints and fickle lovers, and his 1953 The Earrings of Madame de..., considered
- [Heart-Shaped World: "The Earrings of Madame de…](https://parallax-view.org/heart-shaped-world-the-earrings-of-madame-de/): The Earrings of Madame de… has been called one of the perfect pictures of cinema. And it is amazing, a piece that is not just directed, not just choreographed, but sculpted in time and space, with actors and décor as the raw materials and the camera carving out the story. Charles Boyer gives what I
- [Parallax View's Best of 2022](https://parallax-view.org/parallax-view-best-of-2022/): Parallax View contributors and friends offer their lists of the best films of 2022, plus links to awards, polls, and other lists.
- [Skolimowski: "Deep End"](https://parallax-view.org/skolimowski-deep-end/): [Originally written for the University of Washington Office of Cinema Studies Film Series "Love and Death," November 15, 1983] Jerzy Skolimowski. The name does not come trippingly to the Anglo-Saxon tongue, but it's worth fixing in mind all the same, for Skolimowski is one of the sharpest filmmakers now living. He doesn't get to make
- [Parallax View's Best of 2021](https://parallax-view.org/parallax-views-best-of-2021/): Contributors to and friends of Parallax View look back at the films of 2021,
- [Me and My Gal](https://parallax-view.org/me-and-my-gal/): [Originally published on Straight Shooting at Queen Anne News, September 30, 2012] Ed. note: republished to mark its availability streaming on Criterion Channel this month. Just a quick recommend, before it's too late. One of my very favorite movies is making a rare TV appearance Monday, Oct. 1, at 5 p.m. West Coast time on
- [Sauve qui peut (la vie) - Jean-Luc Godard begins again](https://parallax-view.org/sauve-qui-peut-la-vie-godard/): This is a very provocative film. It doesn't soothe, doesn't beguile, doesn't provide answers but instead makes you ask, or listen to, questions you'd never have thought of if this film didn't exist.
- [Jean-Luc Godard's 'Histoire(s) du Cinema'](https://parallax-view.org/dvd-jean-luc-godards-histoires-du-cinema/): In eight episodes and four-and-a-half hours, Godard struggles between his conflicting perspectives on cinema in his epic rumination on cinema as industry and art.
- [Blu-ray: Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘A Married Woman’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-jean-luc-godards-married-woman/): A Married Woman (Cohen, Blu-ray, DVD), subtitled “Fragments of a film shot in 1964,” is Jean-Luc Godard’s modern portrait of love and sex in the media-saturated sixties with Macha Méril in a role that was clearly meant for Godard’s wife and longtime muse Anna Karina (they were separated at the time) and it channels Godard’s
- [Vivre sa vie – A Life to Live in 12 Chapters](https://parallax-view.org/vivre-sa-vie-1962-kathleen-murphy/): Anna Karina is Nana Klein in Jean-Luc Godard's 1962 portrait of a young woman who becomes a professional prostitute.
- [Pierrot le Fou - Love, hate, action, violence, death](https://parallax-view.org/pierrot-le-fou-1965-jean-luc-godard/): Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina star in Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 mix of road movie, crime fantasy, cultural satire, tale of consumerist alienation and bourgeois apathy, and femme fatale noir in Technicolor and CinemaScope.
- [Masculin-Féminin - Mapping All Over](https://parallax-view.org/masculin-feminin-mapping-all-over/): Richard T. Jameson celebrates Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 film as "the perfect artifact, to deal with a world and a world-view no previous cinematic style could have adequately and truly encompassed."
- [William Richert on 'Winter Kills'](https://parallax-view.org/william-richert-on-winter-kills/): Richard Jameson talks with William Richert on the frustrating journey to get 'Winter Kills' into theaters.
- [Hard Eight](https://parallax-view.org/hard-eight-1997-richard-t-jameson/): Richard T. Jameson remembers Philip Baker Hall in his review of Paul Thomas Anderson's 'Hard Eight.'
- [DVD: 'Show Boat' (1936)](https://parallax-view.org/dvd-show-boat-1936/): The 1936 production of Show Boat is the second version of the story based on Edna Ferber's novel (the 1929 version was in fact shot as a silent adaptation of the original novel and hastily reworked to include some of the show's songs as a part-talkie release) and still the best. Irene Dunne, who had
- ["Breaking new ground has always been in the medium itself" – An Interview With Douglas Trumbull](https://parallax-view.org/breaking-new-ground-has-always-been-in-the-medium-itself-an-interview-with-douglas-trumbull/): Trumbull discusses his work on '2001,' 'Silent Running,' 'Blade Runner' and other films in the 2005 interview.
- [In Memoriam: Tom Keogh](https://parallax-view.org/in-memoriam-tom-keogh-wild-child/): Tom Keogh, film critic and friend, passed away in 2021. Robert Horton remembers Tom and presents his review of Francois Truffaut's 'The Wild Child.'
- [Vivre Sa Vie, Summer Hours and a Crazy Heart - DVDs of the Week](https://parallax-view.org/vivre-sa-vie-summer-hours-and-a-crazy-heart-dvds-for-the-week/): Vivre Sa Vie (Criterion) Jean-Luc Godard's fourth film marked a significant new direction for young turk director, away from the impassioned sketchiness of his furiously directed first films and into the realm of carefully composed scenes and formal visual strategies. Developed to showcase his wife and muse Anna Karina (they were on the verge of
- [Review: Bobby Deerfield](https://parallax-view.org/review-bobby-deerfield/): [Originally published in Movietone News 58-59, August 1978] Sydney Pollack has carted the same thematic luggage down the road so consistently that running a standard, connect-the-dots literary tracer through his feature works is relatively easy. Pollack has concerned himself not so much with issues of death as with things that are dead, or so close
- [Night of the Auk](https://parallax-view.org/night-of-the-auk/): By Matthew Rovner [Note: The television production of Night of the Auk is not available on home video in any format. The UCLA film library kindly let me view a video cassette of the production. However, I was not allowed to take any photos; nonetheless, there are pre-existing photos of the TV production, on the
- [TV: Lou Grant - hail](https://parallax-view.org/tv-lou-grant/): Lou Grant lost his job at the end of last TV season when he got fired from the news department at WJM-TV, Minneapolis. The guy was worth reprieving, and 'Lou Grant' testifies to his resiliency. To move from producer of a local television news show to managing editor of a Los Angeles paper may be no career wrench, but in other respects Lou has taken a considerable leap: From the cozy ensemble environment of a half-hour sitcom series to the lead in an hourlong show
- [TV: 'Lou Grant' farewell](https://parallax-view.org/tv-lou-grant-farewell/): [Originally published in The Weekly, July 7, 1982] My wife just told me that Lou Grant is going to be on in Lou Grant's time slot this week. This is something new and different. It had looked as if CBS, not content with having cancelled one of the best dramatic series in television history, wouldn't
- [Not Quite Hollywood - Disreputable and Delirious Downunder Movies](https://parallax-view.org/review-not-quite-hollywood-the-wild-untold-story-of-ozploitation/): Mark Hartley's unabashedly affectionate Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story Of Ozploitation!, his tribute to Australian genre cinema, is one of the rarities that justifies my passion for documentaries about films and film history: a smartly made look at an otherwise neglected aspect of film history and culture, packed with colorful stories, witty observations,
- [Blu-ray: Walter Hill's 'Streets of Fire' on Shout! Factory](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-walter-hill-streets-of-fire-shout-factory/): A self-described "A Rock and Roll Fable" from "another time, another place," I think of Walter Hill's Streets of Fire (1984) as a rock and roll western dropped into the urban badlands of a brick and neon noir. It opens on what appears to be the 1950s frozen in time, a working class neighborhood forgotten
- [Blu-ray: 'The Lovers on the Bridge' on Kino Lorber](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-the-lovers-on-the-bridge-on-kino-lorber/): The Lovers on the Bridge (France, 1991) (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray), Leos Carax’s tale of l’amour fou, was the most expensive film ever made in France at the time and one of the most ravishing made anywhere ever. It was also a commercial disaster, alternately celebrated as a triumph of personal expression and vilified as the
- [Monte Hellman on "Road to Nowhere"](https://parallax-view.org/monte-hellman-on-road-to-nowhere/): [originally published August 11, 2011] Road to Nowhere is Monte Hellman's first feature in 21 years. The director of The Shooting and Two-Lane Blacktop, a resolutely personal director who turned out drive-in pictures for Roger Corman and spent his career largely transforming work-for-hire productions into distinctive and mysterious films, spent years taking jobs as editor
- [A Sunday in the Country](https://parallax-view.org/a-sunday-in-the-country-1985-kathleen-murphy/): [Originally published in The Weekly (Seattle)] Bertrand Tavernier's achingly beautiful A Sunday in the Country records one bittersweet day in the turn-of-the-century life of Monsieur Ladmiral (Louis Ducreux), a 76-year-old painter in pastoral retirement. It's Indian summer, that lavishly spendthrift season poised at the edge of winter. Edouard and Irène, the old man's offspring, pay
- [Coup de Torchon](https://parallax-view.org/coup-de-torchon-richard-t-jameson-1983/): [Original published in The Weekly (Seattle), July 13, 1983] It's 1938 in the French-African village of Bourkassa and Lucien Cordier, the one-man local constabulary, can't get no respect. The lone inhabitant of the jail, an ancient black trustee who once poisoned his wife, must have been incarcerated long before Lucien's time, because Lucien never arrests
- [Videodrone: 'Stoker'](https://parallax-view.org/videodrone-stoker/): Stoker (Fox) - Hollywood is always drafting new talent from abroad, especially from thriving cinema cultures. From Mexico, we received an injection of new blood thanks to Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cauron, and Alejandro González Iñárritu. Back in the nineties, it was the Hong Kong action stars on both sides of the camera, from Jackie
- [Seriously Though, What Have You Done to Solange?](https://parallax-view.org/what-have-you-done-to-solange/): [Originally published in Keyframe] What Have You Done to Solange? (1972) is celebrated by fans and genre historians alike as one of the masterpieces of giallo. An Italian-German coproduction shot largely in England, it’s directed by Massimo Dallamano, who visualized the stark intensity of Sergio Leone’s arid anti-hero epics as cinematographer of A Fistful of Dollars
- [Parallax View's Best of 2020](https://parallax-view.org/parallax-view-best-of-2020/): A belated welcome to 2021 with one last look back at the best releases of 2020. It goes without saying that this has been an unusual year in every way. It is no less true for the year in cinema, as theaters shuttered across the nation (in Seattle, they were shut down for more than
- [The Wilderness Years: Buñuel in the Fifties](https://parallax-view.org/wilderness-years-bunuel-fifties/): Between his revolutionary debut with the triple threat of Un chien andalou (1929), L'âge d'or (1930), and Land Without Bread (1933) and leaping back into international attention with Viridiana (1961), which won the Palm d'Or and was denounced by the Vatican, Luis Bunuel spent over a decade making movies in the Mexican film industry. He
- [What to stream: 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom' on Netflix, 'The Expanse' returns on Amazon, 'Tenet' comes to VOD](https://parallax-view.org/what-to-stream-ma-raineys-black-bottom-on-netflix-the-expanse-returns-on-amazon-tenet-comes-to-vod/): Here's what's new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services ... Viola Davis plays Ma Rainey, the mother of the blues, and Chadwick Boseman (in his final screen performance) is the fiery trumpeter in her band in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" (2020, R), a
- [What to stream: ‘I’m Your Woman’ on Amazon, ‘The Prom’ and ‘Funny Boy’ on Netflix, ‘Let Them Talk on HBO Max](https://parallax-view.org/what-to-stream-im-your-woman-amazon-prom-funny-boy-netflix-let-them-talk-hbo-max/): Here's what's new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services ... "I'm Your Woman" (2020, R) stars Rachel Brosnahan as a housewife who goes on the run when gangsters come after her husband (Bill Heck), who has kept his criminal life hidden from her,
- [For Barbara: The agony and the ecstasy of 1974](https://parallax-view.org/for-barbara-the-agony-and-the-ecstasy-of-1974/)
- [In Black & White: 'The Marx Bros. Scrapbook' and 'Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Sometimes Zeppo'](https://parallax-view.org/in-black-white-the-marx-bros-scrapbook-groucho-harpo-chico-and-sometimes-zeppo-book-review/)
- [Limelight: Seattle film year 1973, cut and dried](https://parallax-view.org/limelight-seattle-film-year-1973-movietone-news/)
- [2000 Eyes: In the Mood for Love](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-in-the-mood-for-love-jameson/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] Listed in the Cannes festival catalog as "Untitled" and shown via a print lacking its final sound mix, Wong Kar-wai's new picture is both more of the same and a tentative step in a new direction. Although the Hong Kong director continues his fruitful partnership with first-rate, Australian-born cinematographer Christopher Doyle,
- [2000 Eyes: The House of Mirth](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-the-house-of-mirth/): [Written for Film.com] Gillian Anderson’s performance as Lily Bart in The House of Mirth is weirdly un-modern — the actress seems to have tapped directly into the mindset of the Edith Wharton novel, to a style predating ironic distance. Anderson maintains this even though the film’s dialogue and line readings are (rightly so) pitched in
- [2000 Eyes: Battlefield Earth](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-battlefield-earth-2/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] “Man is an endangered species,” alerts the introductory card to this adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard’s Star Wars inspired epic sci-fi novel. It should have warned us that logic was also hitting hard times. The year is 3000 and the place is Earth. After a millennium of brutal subjugation by the
- [2000 Eyes: 102 Dalmatians](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-102-dalmatians/): [Written for Film.com] Shortly before the end of a promotional screening of 102 Dalmatians, an anxious Disney publicist leaned into the press row where I sat and announced that a couple of the film's reels had been shown out of order. Did we critic types happen to notice, she asked? Of course, reply my astute colleagues.
- [2000 Eyes: South of Heaven, West of Hell](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-south-of-heaven-west-of-hell/): [Written for Amazon.com] If you've never heard of South of Heaven, West of Hell, there's an excellent reason. If you have heard of it, it's probably because you stumbled upon the information that it marks the directorial debut of singer-actor Dwight Yoakam, who managed to sweet-talk a spectacularly quirky cast into abetting the enterprise: current
- [Sean Connery: The Man Who Would Be King](https://parallax-view.org/sean-connery-the-man-who-would-be-king-1997/): Originally published in Film Comment in 1997 Just back from the Crusades after twenty years, Sean Connery's Robin Hood peers up at an abbey window to espy his onetime Maid Marian (Audrey Hepburn) decked out in nun's habit. "What," demands her scruffy swain, "are you doing in that costume?" "Living it," she retorts. In Robin
- [Review: The Man Who Would Be King](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-man-who-would-be-king-2/): [Originally published in Movietone News 48, February 1976] John Huston said recently he has made only three good films in the past decade: Reflections in a Golden Eye, Fat City, and The Man Who Would Be King. Though I'm still holding out—more or less alone, I think—for The Kremlin Letter to be included among his
- [Review: The Man Who Would Be King](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-man-who-would-be-king/): [Originally published in Movietone News 49, April 1976] It's hard not to think about Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre after seeing The Man Who Would Be King, for reasons that range from their broadest similarities as adventure yarns involving men balancing vision against obsession and finally losing everything in their efforts to get everything,
- [Review: Robin and Marian](https://parallax-view.org/review-robin-and-marian/): [Originally published in Movietone News 50, June 1976] A lot of things work against Richard Lester's new film Robin and Marian. In the first place, as two of England's most treasured heroes, those ur-Communists Robin Hood and Little John, Lester has cast (horrors!) two rowdy Scots, Sean Connery and Nicol Williamson. In the second, he
- [Still Life: 'Robin and Marian'](https://parallax-view.org/still-life-robin-and-marian/): [Originally published in Movietone News 49, April 1976] Ripeness has gone to rot with a vengeance in Richard Lester's latest film. In some wasteland out at the edge of the world (patently not a holy land) a one-eyed old man and some women and children hide out in a cracked, ungarrisoned castle and do not
- [2000 Eyes: Hollow Man](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-hollow-man-horton/): [Written for Film.com] If Hollow Man doesn’t dive anywhere near the implications of its T.S. Eliot–inspired title, settling for the form and function of a summer movie, it nevertheless offers something extra. That extra is the edge provided by director Paul Verhoeven, the perverse Dutch master who brings his cruel, nasty personality to the party.
- [2000 Eyes: Scary Movie](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-scary-movie-axmaker/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] If the baddest of the Farrelly brothers bad taste gags has you in stitches, then this is the movie for you. For almost ninety minutes director Keenen Ivory Wayans tries to meld the pop-culture parodies of Airplane! and its ilk with jokes so crude and outrageously raunchy that even Jim Carrey
- [2000 Eyes: Shadow of the Vampire](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-shadow-of-the-vampire/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] One of the most eagerly anticipated offerings at Cannes this year, Shadow of the Vampire is the first feature in a decade from E. Elias Merhige, whose only previous effort was the one-of-a-kind avant-garde feature Begotten (1990). That amazing film visualized a timeless cycle of birth, death, and regeneration, in Druidic
- [2000 Eyes: Gohatto (aka Tabou)](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-gohatto-aka-tabou/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] "Have you ever killed a man? ... Have you ever made love?" It's tempting to call this latest film by Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses, Max Mon Amour) a meditation on the "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward gays in the military — except that in Kyoto's Shinsengumi
- [2000 Eyes: Autumn in New York](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-autumn-in-new-york-joan-chen/): [Written for Film.com] Like most movies, Autumn in New York has a way of stating its themes in dialogue, so we don’t miss the point. In one scene, hip restaurateur Richard Gere asks his best buddy why he should continue a relationship with a much younger woman with a serious illness. The buddy, played by
- [2000 Eyes: Bossa Nova](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-bossa-nova-bruno-barreto/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] What’s sadder than a would-be lilting comedy that just doesn’t lilt? It doesn’t help when someone decides to name the thing Bossa Nova and fill it with the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim. The music sounds as sea-breezy and listenable as ever, but Bruno Barreto’s movie is flatfooted to the max.
- [2000 Eyes: Me, Myself & Irene](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-me-myself-irene/): [Written for Film.com] Of course the Farrelly brothers would make a split personality movie. It’s autobiographical: these filmmaking provocateurs are divided between sweet and sour, between the romance of classic screwball comedy and Mad magazine on acid. So we get Me, Myself & Irene, a comedy about a Rhode Island cop who suffers from split
- [2000 Eyes: The 6th Day](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-the-6th-day/): [Originally written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] Arnold Schwarzenegger fans were perplexed by End of Days, the dreary, hysterical millennial thriller that marked his comeback from a two-year break. Hollywood’s favorite action hero was reduced to a cynical, burned-out husk of an alcoholic cop on a vaguely redemptive quest. Where was the wiseacre tough guy of few
- [2000 Eyes: Plunkett & Macleane](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-plunkett-macleane/): [Written for Amazon.com] No one will be neutral about Plunkett & Macleane. Either you go with its notion of cheeky, stylish fun or you want to grab first-time director Jake Scott by the ear and slap him silly. Your inclination may depend on whether you recall his dad Ridley’s own directing debut, The Duellists (1977),
- [2000 Eyes: Innocence](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-innocence/): [Written for Reel.com] Innocence, Paul Cox's paean to the power of love opens on a boy and a girl biking down a country path, so magnetized by their young lust they must hold hands even as they ride. She's blooming, dressed in richest blue and red; as they kiss hungrily on a bridge, she anchors
- [2000 Eyes: Les Destinées sentimentales](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-les-destinees-sentimentales/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] Three hours long and a far cry from his ultramodern chronicles of disenchantment, Olivier Assayas’s Les Destinées sentimentales ranges from the winter of 1900 to springtime some thirty years later. In so doing, the film recalls a genre that was in vogue around the time its own story ends — during
- [2000 Eyes: U-571](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-u-571/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] Jonathan Mostow made his feature-directing debut a couple of seasons ago with Breakdown, a tense road-movie-cum-chase-thriller that pitted motorist and husband Kurt Russell against a sinister good-old-boy trucker (the late J.T. Walsh) who had somehow kidnapped Russell’s wife in broad daylight and the wide open spaces of the desert Southwest. The picture
- [What to stream: 'The Haunting of Bly Manor' on Netflix, 'The Right Stuff' on Disney+, final seasons of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Mr. Robot'](https://parallax-view.org/what-to-stream-haunting-of-bly-manor-netflix-the-right-stuff-disney/): Here's what's new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services ... "The Haunting of Bly Manor" (TV-MA), from "The Haunting of Hill House" creator Mike Flanagan, adapts the Henry James classic "The Turn of the Screw," updating it to 1980s England. "Hill House" actor
- [2000 Eyes: Dream of Light](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-dream-of-light/): [Written for The Stranger] In 1973, the Spanish filmmaker Victor Erice announced himself as a major director with one of the great debuts in cinema, Spirit of the Beehive, a stunningly assured and poetic evocation of the fantasy of childhood, as well as a beautiful salute to James Whale's Frankenstein. It took a decade for Erice's second film, El
- [2000 Eyes: Amores Perros](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-amores-perros/): [Written for The Stranger] A dinged-up Grand Marquis rockets through Mexico City traffic, straddling the white line; two young guys inside, very hyper, have a dog gushing blood in the back seat, and, a couple of car lengths behind, some character in a van sticking a pistol out the window and trying to punch a
- [2000 Eyes: Yi Yi (aka A-One and a-Two)](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-yi-yi-aka-a-one-and-a-two/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] Edward Yang’s work on this nearly-three-hour family drama from Taiwan won him the Best Director award from the Cannes 2000 jury. Quiet, patient, undemonstrative, Yi Yi is no tour de force à la Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, nor an emotional tone poem like Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood
- [2000 Eyes: The Contender](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-the-contender/): [Written for Film.com] With Aaron Sorkin running around holding an armful of Emmys and basking in the love of a nationwide TV audience for creating NBC's "The West Wing," the idea of releasing a lesser political drama on movie screens right now is risky business. The Contender indeed looks narrow and one-dimensional by comparison to the layered
- [2000 Eyes: Deterrence](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-deterrence/): [Written for Film.com] The concept is a little gem out of the B-movie sourcebook: In the year 2008, the president of the United States is waylaid in a small Colorado roadhouse by a massive snowstorm. At that exact moment, the new leader of Iraq—evidently no improvement over the previous leader of Iraq—launches an invasion force
- [2000 Eyes: Lucky Numbers](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-lucky-numbers/): [Written for Film.com] The critical reaction to Sally Field’s directing debut, Beautiful, was interesting. That film — admittedly a mess — presented a self-centered, vain, cutthroat main character, a beauty contestant played by Minnie Driver. The response to the movie showed virtually no recognition that such a character might be presented as a source of
- [2000 Eyes: Holy Smoke!](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-holy-smoke/): [Written for The Stranger] Recklessness, combined with a passionate, headstrong commitment to see things through to the end, can be deliriously exciting to brush up against, or it can be ruthlessly self-absorbed. No filmmaker balances between these poles, and is more daringly reckless, than Jane Campion. Her characters are often so wrapped up in their own
- [2000 Eyes: Titanic Town](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-titanic-town/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] “We thought we’d left the Troubles behind,” voices 16-year-old Annie McPhelimy (Nuala O’Neill) in the opening moments. “They were just starting.” Her family moves into a modest brick home in Andersonstown, a Catholic district of West Belfast in 1972, to escape the violence of their previous neighborhood, but it isn’t long
- [2000 Eyes: The Ninth Gate](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-the-ninth-gate-reid/): [Written for The Stranger] Johnny Depp, seedier and more aged than he's ever played before, stars as a dealer in antique books. When one of his wealthier clients wants him to track down the three remaining copies of a book that, legend has it, was co-written by Lucifer, he has every reason to be suspicious (not
- [2000 Eyes: Two Family House](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-two-family-house/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] There’s an engaging modesty to Raymond De Felitta’s Sundance Audience Winner Two Family House, a sweet little romantic drama set in the insular Italian and Irish neighborhoods of 1956 Staten Island and narrated with the conversational ease of a bar story. Buddy (Michael Rispoli), a good-hearted but dissatisfied teddy bear of
- [2000 Eyes: Reindeer Games](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-reindeer-games-jameson/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] The kindest thing to say about Reindeer Games is that we shall certainly see far worse movies this year. The picture, a would-be thriller, is a mechanical exercise from the get-go, one that positively defies suspension of disbelief with each succeeding twist of a plot no one would ever hatch in
- [2000 Eyes: Miss Julie](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-miss-julie/): [Written for Amazon.com] The fascination of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, as play or film, resides in the quicksilver shifts of power and vulnerability, assurance and desperation, seducer and seducee, almost from line to line — in the text and, ideally, in the performances of two equally matched actors. One Midsummer’s Eve, in the scullery of
- [2000 Eyes: Pola X](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-pola-x/): [Written for Film.com] Herman Melville’s novel Pierre, or the Ambiguities, was widely reviled when it was published, just as Leos Carax’s film of Pierre has been generally maligned. Melville’s book came along in the wide wake of a little thing called Moby-Dick, and even if it had not, it’s a very strange novel—seemingly a put-on
- [2000 Eyes: Madadayo](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-madadayo/): [Written for The Stranger] We (and by we I mean all of us, not just those people) succumb so easily to the extremes when contemplating our demise: apocalypse or enfeebled withering. A bang or a whimper were the only options Eliot gave for the world's end; burn out or fade away, as rock and roll fans
- [2000 Eyes: But I’m A Cheerleader](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-but-im-a-cheerleader/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] Natasha Lyonne (The Slums of Beverly Hills), the most sardonic young actress working today, puts on a cheery face and wears her pom-poms with pride as picture-perfect cheerleader Megan. But she’s got a problem: her boyfriend’s sloppy, slobbering kisses don’t get her all hot and bothered ("Maybe he just doesn’t do
- [2000 Eyes: Shadow Magic](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-shadow-magic/): [Written for Film/com] The lovely subject of Shadow Magic is enough to carry this somewhat awkward film over its rough spots and slow patches. The setting is Peking, around the year 1902, when Chinese culture was still fairly insulated from outside influence. We meet a photographer, Liu (Xia Yu), a very curious fellow in a
- [2000 Eyes: John Frankenheimer interview](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-john-frankenheimer-interview-robert-horton/): [Written for The Herald] One of the cool things about John Frankenheimer is that he really looks like a classic American director. Tall, and still athletic-looking at the age of 70, Frankenheimer has a white-haired, hawk-faced largeness about him. Of course, it probably helps that I am meeting him in a Seattle hotel room so
- [2000 Eyes: Unbreakable](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-unbreakable/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] What if superheroes were real, not some four-color pulp fantasy or Spandex-and-mask-clad movie daredevil, but a part of the fabric of the world? That’s the core of Unbreakable, a potentially interesting idea deflated by the absurd proclamations of an arch screenplay and smothered under the ponderous gravity of M. Night Shyamalan’s
- [2000 Eyes: What Planet Are You From?](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-what-planet-are-you-from/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] You’ve seen the ad: “To save his planet, an alien must find a woman on Earth to have his baby. There’s just one problem.” The accompanying image features a man’s tunic-clad torso, with hands resting near each other below waist level and a bent tulip dangling from his fingers, head terminally
- [2000 Eyes: Red Planet](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-red-planet/): [Written for Film.com] Carrie-Anne Moss may be playing the captain of a mission to Mars, but she’s still subject to that ancient sci-fi convention: the non-essential shower scene. You’ve come a long way, baby, sort of. Actually, the shower scene in Red Planet tries to turn the tables, by having commander Moss unashamedly naked in
- [2000 Eyes: Time Regained](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-time-regained-bruce-reed/): [Written for The Stranger] Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time, if you prefer the more accurate but, to me, less seductively euphonious title that's been gaining currency of late) would certainly seem to stand out at the head of that notorious literary genre known as the "unfilmable novel." It's already defeated, in
- [What to stream: ‘Raised by Wolves’ on HBO Max, ‘Away’ and ‘Borgen’ on Netflix, ‘The Boys’ return to Amazon](https://parallax-view.org/what-to-stream-raised-by-wolves-on-hbo-max-away-and-borgen-on-netflix-the-boys-return-to-amazon/): Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Two androids are tasked with raising human children on a barren, far off planet after a devastating religious war on Earth in “Raised by Wolves: Season 1” (2020, TV-MA), an ambitious, high-concept science
- [2000 Eyes: Cecil B. Demented](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-cecil-b-demented/): [Originally written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] The revolution will not be televised, but if John Waters has his way it may play at a theater near you. A spoof of independent filmmaking at its most absurdly radical (and contradictory) fringe, Cecil B. Demented affectionately lampoons both Hollywood and guerrilla cinema in a bizarre revision of the
- [2000 Eyes: Where the Money Is](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-where-the-money-is/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] The old guy transferred from the state pen doesn’t move much and says less. Nothing at all, actually. He’s had a stroke. That’s why he’s slumped in a wheelchair in another mossy state facility, a geriatric sanitarium, instead of occupying a cell. But his nurse, Carol (Linda Fiorentino), can’t accept that
- [2000 Eyes: Shaft](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-shaft/): [Written for Fim.com] In this remake, Richard Roundtree, the original John Shaft, graciously passes the torch to Samuel L. Jackson. The new film’s director, John Singleton, gives Roundtree some major respect, including a scene where Roundtree exits a Harlem bar with two foxy ladies on his arms. Right on: after all these years, still a
- [2000 Eyes: Joe Gould’s Secret](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-joe-goulds-secret/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] Joe Gould (Ian Holm), a scruffy, disheveled little man, is a homeless bohemian in a tattered secondhand suit and a grizzled gray beard on the streets of 1940s New York. The profane would-be poet, street critic, and professional party guest is famous among the Greenwich Village literati for his colorful stories
- [2000 Eyes: Dr. T and the Women](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-dr-t-and-the-women/): [Written for The Herald] There are two parts to the title Dr. T and the Women. Let’s take each part separately. The women are the ladies in the orbit of Dr. Sully Travis, a Dallas gynecologist. Dr. T has a wife (Farrah Fawcett) who is quietly losing her mind, a sister-in-law (Laura Dern) with Ivana
- [2000 Eyes: The Golden Bowl](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-the-golden-bowl/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] James Ivory, as a writer in the Cannes-Matin notes, has become a genre unto himself, and you couldn’t ask for a more thoroughgoing manifestation of that genre than The Golden Bowl. Adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from one of Henry James’s most intricate novels, mounted in exquisite European locations and handsomely
- [2000 Eyes: Love and Basketball](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-love-and-basketball/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2000] Monica (Sanaa Lathan) is a fierce, hot-tempered competitor whose tomboy years of playground ball with the boys have given her a more aggressive game than women’s basketball refs like to see. Cocky nextdoor neighbor Quincy (Omar Epps) is the son of an NBA player with pro dreams who becomes
- [2000 Eyes: Bait](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-bait/): [Written for Film.com] The plot is convoluted, so stick with me. A two-bit thief, Jamie Foxx, is busted for a robbery at a seafood plant—he had a briny notion to steal shrimp and sell ’em as scampi. The guy spends half a day in a cell with a much more ambitious thief (Robert Pastorelli), who’s
- [What to stream: ‘Lovecraft Country’ on HBO, ‘High Score’ on Netflix, ‘Chemical Hearts’ on Amazon Prime](https://parallax-view.org/what-to-stream-lovecraft-country-on-hbo-high-score-on-netflix-chemical-hearts-on-amazon-prime/): Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … “Lovecraft Country” (TV-MA) takes on both the cosmic horror and the blatant racism of H.P Lovecraft’s stories with the odyssey of an African-American man (Jonathan Majors) searching for his missing father (Michael Kenneth
- [The Seasoned Ticket: Jazz on a Summer's Day](https://parallax-view.org/the-seasoned-ticket-jazz-on-a-summers-day/): The restoration of the classic concert film Jazz on a Summer’s Day is now making the rounds, and it can be watched in a way that will benefit a movie theater of your choice. The Grand Illusion, for instance. If you’re into jazz as a subject—fiction films, concerts, documentary profiles—Scarecrow has more titles than you could watch in
- [2000 Eyes: Shanghai Noon](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-shanghai-noon/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A Chinese guy wearing Indian war paint, a braided waist-length ponytail, and a blue silk robe walks into an Old West saloon … and it’s Jackie Chan! Trust me, it’s funny. Cowboys snicker, barmaids stand agog, and human dynamo Jackie transforms a simple barfight
- [2000 Eyes: Vatel](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-vatel/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] The 53rd Cannes Film Festival opened with a gala extravaganza whose selection struck many as prodigiously ironic — especially if they caught the flick at a morning press show, when Tom Stoppard’s high-flying dialogue and Ennio Morricone’s once-upon-a-time-in-the-17th-century music had to fight the noise from the drills and hammers readying the
- [2000 Eyes: West Beirut](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-west-beirut/): [Written for The Stranger] There is a special category of war film that chooses not to merely restate the obvious lesson that war is a nightmare, but instead tries to capture the joy and riotous freedom that conflict can bring about, and trusts the audience to supply the rest of the story. This is the anarchy
- [2000 Eyes: Snatch](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-snatch/): [Written for Film.com] Guy Ritchie's sophomore feature makes no apologies for clinging to familiar if engagingly iconoclastic material, specifically to Ritchie's own popular crime comedy from 1999, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Refreshingly funny, Lock, Stock introduced a new filmmaker whose incoherent visual aesthetic seemed, at the time, a petty misdemeanor in light of his gift for
- [2000 Eyes: Shadow Hours](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-shadow-hours/): [Written for Film.com] I recently had the pleasure of catching up with Terror is a Man, aka Blood Creature, a 1959 film that might be called—in fact, let’s do it—the Citizen Kane of Filipino horror movies. Essentially a variation on (read: uncredited rip-off of) The Island of Dr. Moreau, Terror is a Man is an
- [2000 Eyes: The Widow of Saint-Pierre](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-the-widow-of-saint-pierre/): [Written for The Stranger] In 1849, on Saint-Pierre, a French-ruled island off the Newfoundland coast, two sailors rescued from the thickest winter fog in memory celebrate their deliverance by getting drunk and killing a man as a kind of stupid prank. One is sentenced to die; the other isn't but dies anyway through a stroke
- [2000 Eyes: What Lies Beneath](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-what-lies-beneath/): [Written for Film.com] Many of Robert Zemeckis’s films derive their energy from a technical challenge: how to combine real people with cartoons (Who Framed Roger Rabbit), how to reconfigure human bodies (Death Becomes Her), how to depict an alien world (Contact), how to make a fictional hero interact with news footage (Forrest Gump), how to
- [Bobby Roth's 'Pearl'](https://parallax-view.org/bobby-roth-pearl/): Bobby Roth appeared on the film scene in the mid/late Seventies with a handful of insightful and clearly personal indie movies, a decade or so before “American independent cinema” became an official designation. The Boss’ Son and Circle of Power in particular impressed us, though they hardly prepared us for this writer-director’s breakout moment, the
- [2000 Eyes: The Claim](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-the-claim/): [Written for Film.com] The Claim takes shape from two sources. The plot is from Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, a great and beautiful novel that seems reasonably available for adaptation to the frozen California Gold Rush era. The style is taken from Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller, that gorgeous 1971 revisionist western shot
- [2000 Eyes: Wonderland](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-wonderland/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] Michael Winterbottom’s checkered career has been inconsistent at best, misdirected at worst. The stylistic chameleon practically remakes himself for each film, from the handsome but chilly restraint of the Thomas Hardy adaptation Jude to the hysterical explosion of sexual obsession in I Want You. The result is a career of fascinating
- [2000 Eyes: Trixie](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-trixie/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] Alan Rudolph has long evinced a tolerance, even love, for fringies, oddballs, and occasionally the clinically deranged. Hence it's no great surprise that he should have dreamed up so addlepated and pixilated a character as Trixie Zurbo, a low-rent rent-a-cop with aspirations of becoming a wisecracking private eye and sleuthing her
- [2000 Eyes: The Perfect Storm](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-the-perfect-storm/): [Written for Film.com] The most authentic thing in The Perfect Storm is the fishing. The movie’s strong on process: the fixing of bait, the hauling up of lines, the stowing of gutted swordfish in ice. The detail in these sequences is briny and gunky, like the matted beards of the fishermen; it has a natural
- [2000 Eyes: 8 1/2 Women](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-8-1-2-women/): [Written for The Stranger] All of Peter Greenaway's films depend less on human emotion than they do on a particularly fierce adherence to preordained patterns. Because of this insistence, they are curiously immune to criticism. Call them callous, misanthropic, inhuman (all of which they certainly are), whatever you like; for the Greenaway fan, such objections have
- [2000 Eyes: X-Men](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-x-men/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] When comic book movies get a bad rap, it’s largely because most comic book movies never quite understand their source. Director Brian Singer (The Usual Suspects) knows exactly what X-Men is about: it’s the pulp superhero version of Rebel Without a Cause, played as a parable in prejudice. In the not-so-distant
- [2000 Eyes: Film Noir (aka Koroshi)](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-film-noir-aka-koroshi/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] Given world enough and time, Jim Thompson the pulp Camus (The Getaway, After Dark My Sweet) would have got round to writing about a poor Thompsonian schlub in Hokkaido, in the snowy north of Japan. Meanwhile, the protagonist of Masahiro Kobayashi's Film Noir will do. He lost his job a while
- [2000 Eyes: Gladiator](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-gladiator/): [Written for Film.com] Gladiator, a blockbuster-budgeted behemoth about ancient Rome, begins with a lyrical closeup of a man’s hand rippling through the wheat in a sun-dappled field. Yes, this has the look of director Ridley Scott, in that exciting/maddening way of his: it’s an image that could come from a tone poem, or from a
- [2000 Eyes: The Way of the Gun](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-the-way-of-the-gun/): [Written for The Herald] “Fifteen million dollars is not money,” says a grizzled veteran of the criminal life. “It’s a motive with a universal adapter on it.” The tang of that dialogue signals the return of Christopher McQuarrie, whose screenplay for The Usual Suspects created the cult of Keyser Soze and won the unknown writer
- [2000 Eyes: The Patriot](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-the-patriot-mel-gibson/): [Written for Film.com] How can a filmmaker with this much bad taste be blessed with such a dazzling gift for making images? That’s the puzzle posed by The Patriot, directed by Roland Emmerich, the German-born creator of Independence Day and Godzilla. Emmerich is like a database of classic compositions and camera angles, spewing out gorgeous
- [2000 Eyes: Small Time Crooks](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-small-time-crooks/): [Written for Film.com] "My husband Otto was dyslexic," recalls Elaine May's sweet but ditzy character, May, in Woody Allen's new film. "The only word he could read correctly was his own name." Ah, bliss. The return of an Allen trademark: a layered-in, conceptual one-liner counterpointing the hard narrative thrust of a scene. In this case,
- [2000 Eyes: Hamlet](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-hamlet/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] This is not your father’s Hamlet. The present melancholy Dane is son of the deceased chairman of Denmark Corporation. His castle is a sleek but alienating New York highrise dotted with omnipresent surveillance cameras, his kingdom city streets lined with paparazzi and tabloid reporters. Like Baz Luhrmann’s vibrant Romeo + Juliet,
- [2000 Eyes: Time Code](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-time-code/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] Some movies become milestones on the basis of quality; others, for being where they are when they are. Mike Figgis’s Time Code is assured of qualifying in the second category. As for the former, the outlook is dubious, but let’s be generous and say that time will tell. If you haven’t
- [2000 Eyes: Following](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-following/): [Written for The Stranger] An unnamed, unemployed young man (Jeremy Theobald) fills up his empty days stalking random people, following them from a distance as they go about their daily routine. He justifies this pathetic habit by telling himself that he's a writer, and this will be good research for his fiction, even though his
- [2000 Eyes: Road Trip](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-road-trip-tom-keogh/): [Written for Film.com] Summer's here as far as Hollywood is concerned: put down that Harold Bloom tome and rediscover the smartass, breast-obsessed 13-year-old boy within. As for rediscovering one's inner 13-year-old girl, well ... autumn will be here before you know it. As if enshrouded in mythology, the silly story of Road Trip is narrated by a
- [Moments out of Time 1979](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1979/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] • The Tree of Wooden Clogs: Interloping in the landowner's courtyard, the young swain is frightened off into the night by the landowner himself, mysteriously banished from the musical soiree in his own parlor. In the barns, animals stir. A coachman waiting to drive his wealthy employers
- [Moments out of Time 1978](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1978/): [Originally published in Movietone News 60-61, February 1979] • The American Friend: Jonathan Zimmerman (Bruno Ganz) removes a sheet of gold leaf from its packing, lets it fall shivering onto his hand, blows it snug like a second skin, then uses that hand to seize the telephone receiver and make the call that will commit
- [Moments out of Time 1977](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1977/): [Originally published in Movietone News 57, February 1978] • Archetypal cinema: the opening of Star Wars. The foreword plunges us, in media res, into the serial of our moviegoing lives. Then the camera drops its field of view, a planet heaves into sight to lend scale to the universe, and a spacecraft angles into frame
- [Moments out of Time 1976](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1976/): [Originally published in Movietone News 53, January 1977] • The premiere of The Clansman, and D.W. Griffith's stately acknowledgement of the cheers-the night we'd like to have attended, and thanks to Peter Bogdanovich for enabling us to be there: Nickelodeon.... • The duel in the barn: shafts of blue light, the flutter of pigeon wings,
- [Moments out of Time 1975](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1975/): [Originally published in Movietone News 47, January 1976] • Keith Carradine singing "I'm Easy" to one or all of four women—and also, to be sure, himself: Nashville... • The awful pale blue oblong of Guinevere's window, Lancelot du Lac: is it the only light in the world, or a glimpse into the void empty even
- [Moments out of Time 1974](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1974/): [Originally published in Movietone News 38, January 1975] • The moment of the year, probably: Day for Night: Georges Delerue phones in from Paris to play one of the key themes for the film-in-progress, at the same time a package of books arrives for use as props in an upcoming scene. As the music plays
- [Moments out of Time 1972](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1972/): [Originally published in Movietone News 20, January 1973] • Le Boucher: a flock of chickens pecking among the leaves in foreground; beyond, frenzied activity at the police station, and we know another grisly murder has come to punctuate, but curiously not to disturb, life in this small French village... • Albert Finney's exquisite gumshoe patter
- [2000 Eyes: Charlie’s Angels](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-charlies-angels-horton/): [Written for Film.com] The development of the MTV style has brought us to Armageddon (a two-and-a-half-hour coming attractions trailer for itself) and The Cell (corrupt visual extravagance), so it is very tempting for critics to despair over the kudzu-like growth of this moviemaking approach. On the other hand, the world of music video also planted
- [2000 Eyes: Charlie’s Angels](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-charlies-angels-axmaker/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] “Not another movie from an old TV show,” moans an airline passenger in the opening scene of Charlie’s Angels as T.J. Hooker: The Movie flashes on the screen as the inflight movie. It’s a cute bit of self-deprecating humor, but this is one sentiment that backfires. In case you were too
- [2000 Eyes: Cast Away](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-cast-away-robert-horton/): [Written for The Herald] Robinson Crusoe lives again, in the utterly engrossing desert island drama Cast Away. This film works for a variety of reasons. But one of the best is the simple dilemma that Mr. Crusoe faced in Daniel Defoe’s novel: how to survive in sandswept isolation (without the tribal councils of Survivor, yet).
- [2000 Eyes: Quills](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-quills-bruce-reid/): [Written for The Stranger] The Marquis de Sade has been many things to many people, but the fact remains that he wrote for one person only: himself. It's this very monomania that gives his works their coldly granitic fascination, page after page of mechanized sexual debasement hewn out like so many identical slabs of stone,
- [2000 Eyes: O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Dancer in the Dark](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-o-brother-where-art-thou-dancer-in-the-dark/): [Written for Reel.com] How strange that two of the movies I’ve liked best and been most surprised by at Cannes 2000 should turn out to be mutant forms of the musical. The Coens’ song-filled O Brother, Where Art Thou? taps into the power of mythic storytelling, the kind of exhilarating power that drives journeys from
- [Ennio Morricone, Musico… Hah-Ha-Hah-Ha-Ha-Ha-Hah!](https://parallax-view.org/ennio-morricone-musico/): I was enamored of Ennio Morricone before I heard a note of his music. My father, like many others, loved westerns, and perhaps even more loved passing their stories down to his son, filling the boy’s head with adventures and derring-do that, in those days before home video, might luckily be stumbled upon someday, surrounding
- [2000 Eyes: Malena](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-malena/): The Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore picked up the best foreign film Oscar in 1989 with Cinema Paradiso, his widely-beloved ode to a movie theater in his native Sicily. This year, Tornatore is positioned to make another run at the Oscar. His new one, Malena, has already picked up a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign
- [2000 Eyes: Mission to Mars](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-mission-to-mars/): [Written for Film.com] In the opening ten minutes of Mission to Mars, we receive all the mandatory backstory of the typical modern Hollywood movie: relationships are explicitly spelled out in the dialogue, a bond between a father and son (never again referred to) is invoked, personal histories are described with a minimum of subtlety. Director
- [2000 Eyes: The Woman Chaser](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-the-woman-chaser/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] Los Angeles, circa 1950. The mood is set with sharp b&w photography, kitschy Polynesian-tinged lounge music and salsa-laced jazz. The Capitol Records building looms large in the background of impeccably composed shots. Patrick Warburton (doomed to spend his life remembered as Puddy from the sitcom Seinfeld) strides onscreen, jaw locked in
- [Morricone Encomium](https://parallax-view.org/morricone-encomium/): [Originally published in Movietone News 40, April 1975] Foreword I don't read a note of music, so the language of this article is necessarily interpretive rather than technical. Also, the here-today-gone-tomorrow Duck, You Sucker has thus far eluded my company, so I have recourse only to the first four westerns that Morricone scored for Leone.
- [2000 Eyes: Dancer in the Dark](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-dancer-in-the-dark/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] The great pleasure of Cannes is having no idea what you’re going to see, and knowing that you're about to be one of the first in the world to see it. When the picture turns out to be absolutely extraordinary — a stylistically exhilarating vision that also sweeps up the entire
- [2000 Eyes: In the Mood for Love](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-in-the-mood-for-love/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] There may be no more sensual director in the world today than Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai. His best films (Chungking Express, Ashes of Time) are rich in unconsummated affairs. The delicate shadow dances of would-be lovers and flirtatious courtships of couples that only fleetingly make contact are like a postmodern vision
- [2000 Eyes: Space Cowboys](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-space-cowboys-clint-eastwood/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] Imagine an Armageddon where, instead of oil-rigger roughnecks, the fate of the world rests on four geriatric, long since retired Air Force test pilots. That’s the plot in a nutshell: a failing Russian satellite running on an archaic American guidance system must get back to full capacity, and the only man
- [2000 Eyes: Battlefield Earth](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-battlefield-earth/): [Written for Film.com] A thousand years from now, things haven’t changed all that much. Oh, the Earth is rubble, and mankind is reduced to a small band of ragged tribesmen. The planet is ruled by the Psychlos, a tall race of alien meanies who breathe acidic air in their huge biodome enclosing what used to
- [2000 Eyes: Beau Travail](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-beau-travail-claire-denis/): [Written for The Stranger] Beauty is a dangerous thing. Not because, as we are often told, it is superficial or deceptive or skin deep; nor for any of the other tepid half-truths we admire because they flatter our own awareness of how far from beautiful most of us are. It's dangerous because it is so
- [2000 Eyes: You Can Count on Me](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-you-can-count-on-me/): [Written for The Herald] Good movies almost always let you know they’re good within the first couple of minutes. You Can Count on Me is that kind of good movie. In a way both casual and heart-stopping, this independent film begins with a car accident that takes the lives of a married couple. They leave
- [2000 Eyes: Time Regained](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-time-regained-raul-ruiz/): [Written for Seattle Post-Intelligencer] Time Regained, adapted by Chilean director Raul Ruiz from the final volume of Marcel Proust’s epic Remembrances of Things Past, is about the texture of memory. Set in the first decades of the 20th century, in the salon society of the Paris élite, the film begins with the aging narrator (a
- [2000 Eyes: Wonder Boys](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-wonder-boys/): [Written for Film.com] by Robert Horton If we can stop talking about Catherine Zeta-Jones for a moment, we might give Michael Douglas his due for Wonder Boys. After enduring a lot of jokes about May-December romances, Douglas comes bouncing back with one of his best performances, the central role in an adaptation of Michael Chabon’s
- [2000 Eyes: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon/): [Written for The Herald] Once upon a time, the Oscars used to give out awards for “Dance Direction.” These days the art of choreography goes mostly unnoticed at Academy Award time. They should revive the award, or invent a new one, for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The award wouldn’t be for dancing, per se, but
- [2000 Eyes: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-reid/): [Written for The Stranger] The courtyards and compounds on display in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon pare elegant yet stifling domains, warmly beautiful but so hushed you can practically see the sounds being absorbed into the darkly lacquered wood. There's no surprise, in these places, that legendary Wudan warrior Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun Fat) can never
- [2000 Eyes: Nurse Betty](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-nurse-betty/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] Neil LaBute didn’t write his latest feature film (John C. Richards and James Flamberg did), and when we consider how tunnel-visioned were In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, that immediately seems a healthy and liberating thing. And so it is. But the longer one watches Nurse Betty,
- [Review: Who'll Stop the Rain?](https://parallax-view.org/review-wholl-stop-the-rain/): [Originally published in Movietone News 60-61, February 1979] “I've been waiting all my life to fuck up like this.” That's the closest we ever get to the motivation of Vietnam War correspondent John (Michael Moriarty), who suddenly, unaccountably decides to buy two kilos of uncut heroin to smuggle from Saigon back to California, there to
- [2000 Eyes](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes/): There’s a 1948 movie with the wonderful title Night Has a Thousand Eyes. What beauty, mystery, and resonance that promises — not even considering that the film’s cast included lambent-eyed Gail Russell, who elsewhere inspired Ray Milland to compose “Stella by Starlight.” How regrettable that the movie isn’t very good. And yet that title. A
- [2000 Eyes: Traffic](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-traffic/): [Written for Film.com] In a very short period of time—since monkeying around with a self-made fandango called Schizopolis—Steven Soderbergh has mounted a kind of stealth attack on Hollywood formula moviemaking. Out of Sight brought suppleness to the traditional star vehicle, The Limey dizzily jumbled expectations in a revenge plot, Erin Brockovich expertly balanced the dictates
- [2000 Eyes: O Brother, Where Art Thou?](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-o-brother-where-art-thou/): [Written for Mr. Showbiz] The first weekend of the 53rd Cannes Film Festival couldn’t have dawned more auspiciously. The Coen brothers are back with their first movie of the millennium and it’s a doozy. Taking their title from a maudlin catchphrase of the Great Depression—and from the mock-allegory with which Preston Sturges’s 1942 classic Sullivan’s
- [2000 Eyes: Vertical Limit](https://parallax-view.org/2000-eyes-vertical-limit/): [Written for Film.com] There is no vertical limit on inanity, a principle aptly proved by this unbelievable mountain climbing movie. It begins on sacred cinematic ground, Monument Valley, where the air is defiled by three climbers singing the old Eagles tune “Take It to the Limit.” They are a family: siblings Peter and Annie Garrett
- [Moments out of Time 1973](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1973/): [Originally published in Movietone News 29, January/February 1974] • The death of Slim Pickens in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: "Knock knock knockin' on Heaven's door"... • The cut from Calvero the performer staring out at an empty theatre to Calvero the man sitting on his bed in the night, staring into the camera
- [Review: Butch and Sundance: The Early Days](https://parallax-view.org/review-butch-and-sundance-the-early-days/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] There are undeniable similarities between Butch and Sundance: The Early Days and Richard Lester's reworking of popular mythology, Robin and Marian. The earlier film, written by William (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) Goldman's brother James, contained several seemingly deliberate takeoffs on Butch and Sundance in the
- ["The Man I Love," "Road House" and Ida Lupino: The Noir Heroine](https://parallax-view.org/the-man-i-love-road-house-and-ida-lupino-the-noir-heroine/): If Barbara Stanwyck was the Queen Bee of film noir (as she was dubbed in an iconic issue of Film Comment), Ida Lupino was its tough cookie, a beauty with brass and a dame who knew the score. She was a romantic heroine who could hold her own against the brawny heroes and rough villains
- [Sam Peckinpah by Sam Fuller](https://parallax-view.org/sam-peckinpah-by-sam-fuller/): [Originally published in Movietone News 60-61, February 1979] When he was in Koln, Germany scouting locations for his 1972 film Dead Pigeon on Beethovenstrasse, lifelong newsman Samuel Fuller was invited by a local journal to review any recent picture that had caught his fancy. We are delighted to reprint the result of that invitation here,
- ["A privilege to work in films": Sam Peckinpah among friends](https://parallax-view.org/a-privilege-to-work-in-films-sam-peckinpah-among-friends/)
- [Your Sister's Sister](https://parallax-view.org/your-sisters-sister-lynn-shelton/): [originally published in The Herald in 2012] One thing everybody could agree on at this year's Seattle International Film Festival was the rightness of the opening night movie. It was Your Sister's Sister, directed by Seattle resident Lynn Shelton, and it set the tone for the Northwesty slant of the festival that followed. It makes
- [Cinematic Archeology on DVD - "Orson Welles' Don Quixote"? Not Even Close](https://parallax-view.org/cinematic-archeology-on-dvd-not-quite-orson-welles-don-quixote/): Don Quixote is one "lost" Welles film that is surely doomed to remain that way: unfinished, fragmented, a puzzle with pieces that have been recut so many times they simply don't fit together. Welles jokingly renamed the film "When Are You Going to Finish Don Quixote?" because he continued to rewrite and reconceptualize the film
- [Topical Thunder: Why I Love "The Ringer"](https://parallax-view.org/topical-thunder-why-i-love-the-ringer/): I was tempted to title this posting "When the f**k did we get ice cream?" to honor one of the funniest, most surprising lines of dialogue from The Ringer, the underrated, frequently hilarious Johnny Knoxville comedy from 2005. Like many of the best lines in the film (and kudos to screenwriter Ricky Blitt for providing
- [George Lucas: The Last Champion of Colonialist Cinema](https://parallax-view.org/george-lucas-the-last-champion-of-colonialist-cinema/): Way back in the original Star Wars (before it was branded with a "IV" and subtitled "A New Hope"), it did not escape notice that at the end of the film, it was human heroes Luke Skywalker and Han Solo who got the glory while the non-humans – the wookie, Chewbacca, and the two robots
- [Another Parallax View](https://parallax-view.org/another-parallax-view/)
- [Is that Downey? Okey DoQui](https://parallax-view.org/the-downydoqui-connection/): Is it just me, or does Robert Downey, Jr., seem to be channeling the the great character actor Robert DoQui (of Nashville and Robocop fame) in Tropic Thunder? Mind you, I haven't seen the film yet, but I do know that he plays a method actor in the movie who goes to extreme measures to
- [Going "The Full Retard": How Far is Too Far?](https://parallax-view.org/going-the-full-retard-how-far-is-too-far/): Many thanks to Roger Ebert and his website editor Jim Emerson for posting my letter to the editor regarding the protests by some disability advocates over the "retard" humor in Tropic Thunder. As stated in my letter, I think most people will see the film and understand that its target of satire is not the
- [Winners Announced in First Annual Seattle Film Critics Awards](https://parallax-view.org/winners-announced-in-first-annual-seattle-film-critics-awards/): Press release Winners Announced in First Annual Seattle Film Critics Awards December 19, 2002 Alarmed by the dearth of year-end movie awards, the film critics of the Puget Sound area have raised their voices in unison for the first time. Twenty-four of the area's top critics have been polled for the first annual Seattle Film
- [We Go Way Back](https://parallax-view.org/we-go-way-back-lynn-shelton/): [originally published in The Herald in 2008] For some reason, the local area has been a haven for filmmakers who prefer an experimental mode to traditional storytelling. Feature-length experimental films are a notoriously tough sell, but a few recent items, such as Gregg Lachow's Money Buys Happiness and Robinson Devor's Police Beat, have broken through
- [My Effortless Brilliance](https://parallax-view.org/my-effortless-brilliance/): [originally published on GreenCine in 2008] Is there something in the misty Northwest air that makes its filmmakers incline toward the dreamy, the open-ended, the unresolved? Seattle has had no slick Hollywood "breakthrough," instead turning out poetic little movies that seem embarrassed about conventional storytelling. This can be a good thing. Case in point: Lynn
- [Lynn Shelton Goes Way Back](https://parallax-view.org/lynn-shelton-goes-way-back/): Fandor co-founder Jonathan Marlow and director Lynn Shelton are in attendance at Northwest Film Forum’s Local Sightings Film Festival on Saturday, September 26 to present a 35mm screenings of Shelton's debut feature, We Go Way Back, the same day it makes its streaming debut on Fandor. It's a preview of the tenth anniversary theatrical release that’ll occur early
- [Review: Outside In](https://parallax-view.org/review-outside-in/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly “You are to stay within Snohomish County,” the man says sternly. These words—not often uttered in the cinema—are spoken by a parole officer to a newly released ex-con in Outside In. They are also taken to heart by the film’s director, Lynn Shelton, who creates a beguiling mood piece
- ['Touchy Feely': Lynn Shelton’s Low-Key Charmer](https://parallax-view.org/touchy-feely-lynn-sheltons-low-key-charmer/): [Originally published in Seattle Weekly, September 2013] What compelling mysteries might be quietly thrumming inside the world of the dentist’s office? It is characteristic of the wistful, daydreamy universe of Lynn Shelton’s films that this unlikely question (has anyone outside the dental profession ever asked it?) makes up part of her latest project. Touchy Feely
- [Interview: Lynn Shelton on "My Effortless Brilliance"](https://parallax-view.org/interview-lynn-shelton-on-my-effortless-brilliance/): [I interviewed Lynn Shelton in Seattle on May 17, 2008, to talk about her then new film, My Effortless Brilliance, and her debut feature, We Go Way Back. This interview was originally published on GreenCine on May 24, 2008. Since this interview, Shelton made Humpday, which was chosen to play in the exclusive competition at
- ['Contagion' Doesn't Want to Reach Out and Touch You](https://parallax-view.org/contagion-steven-soderbergh-kathleen-murphy/): Kathleen Murphy’s review of Contagion was written for Movies/MSN at the time of the film’s original release. Steven Soderbergh's super-creepy Contagion does for pandemic what the Oscar-winning director did for drug Traffic back in 2000. Mimicking the insidious spread of coke-related ills, he tracks a lethal little virus—bat-borne, then transmitted to a piglet—as it metastasizes out of a
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of September 8](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-september-8/): “Though the international fame of In the Realm of the Senses—now widely regarded as one of the most important films of the Japanese New Wave—has engendered a flurry of reviews, articles, and interviews in the decades since its scandalous premier, there is a dearth of both media and scholarly attention towards Matsuda, any interest in charting
- [Blu-ray: Universal Classic Monsters: Complete 30-Film Collection](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-universal-classic-monsters-complete-30-film-collection/): Universal Classic Monsters: Complete 30-Film Collection (Universal, Blu-ray) Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolf Man, and the Mummy have traversed the trail from horror icon to camp figure and back again and sparked the imaginations of readers and moviegoers for decades. Yet call forth the images nestled in the public consciousness and you’ll find that the figures
- [Review: Touch of Evil](https://parallax-view.org/review-touch-of-evil/): [Originally written for Seattle Weekly, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. It takes chutzpah to monkey with Orson Welles, even for the best of reasons, and
- [Parallax View's Best of 2018](https://parallax-view.org/best-films-of-2018/): Welcome 2019 with one last look back at the best releases of 2018, as seen by the Parallax View contributors and friends and a few special invitations. Sean Axmaker 1. First Reformed2. The Rider3. Roma4. Leave No Trace5. If Beale Street Could Talk6. Private Life7. Burning8. BlackKkKlansman9. Hereditary10. Zama A second ten (in alphabetical order):
- [Moments Out of Time 2018](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-2018/): Images, lines, gestures, moods from the year's films * At the movies, Roma: German slapstick on screen in deep distance, a pair of lovers in closeup silhouette in left of frame, gray ranks of anonymous filmgoers in between. The space is familiar, auspicious, yet somehow fraught. Camera does not move, but things come undone....* “I
- [Streaming the 2019 Oscar nominees](https://parallax-view.org/streaming-the-2019-oscar-nominees/): The Academy Awards will be handed out on Sunday, February 24. Are you caught up on the major nominees? Eight films made the cut in the category of best picture and a few of them are still in theaters, notably the offbeat royal drama The Favourite (2018, R), which came away with ten nominations, political commentary Vice (2018,
- [And The Winner Is: 2019 Oscars Preditions](https://parallax-view.org/and-the-winner-is-2019-oscars-preditions/): From climate change to measles to the epidemic of motion-smoothing on TV sets, I know we have many, many more important things to worry about. But in the moments before your beach house is inundated by rising seas, spare a thought for the slow-motion pratfall that is this year’s Oscars ceremony. The awards, to be
- [Moments Out of Time 2019](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-2019/): Images, lines, gestures, moods from the year's films * Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), on the roof to repair Rick’s TV antenna, leans into the California sun and the music Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) is playing in the nearby house. Once upon a Time…in Hollywood...* “Now is not the time to not say.” Angelo Bruno (Harvey
- ["I had to risk not being liked in that scene" - Michael Murphy Interviewed](https://parallax-view.org/i-had-to-risk-not-being-liked-in-that-scene-michael-murphy-interviewed/): [Originally published in Movietone News 60-61, February 1979] May 9, 1978 New York City Judith M. Kass: Vincent Canby of The New York Times called your acting in An Unmarried Woman "an exceptionally complex performance as the husband whose emotional problems set in motion the events that make possible the Clayburgh character's eventual liberation." I'm
- [Review: American Hot Wax / FM](https://parallax-view.org/review-american-hot-wax-fm/): [Originally published in Movietone News 60-61, February 1979] For a while there it seemed as if the post-mortems on the summer's rock-oriented pictures like American Hot Wax and FM were being written before the films' release, let alone box-office decease. But even if the backers will get to file their tax writeoffs, it's almost certain
- [DVDs of the Month: The African Queen and Bigger Than Life](https://parallax-view.org/dvds-of-the-month-the-african-queen-and-bigger-than-life/): One of the most beloved and cherished Hollywood adventures ever made and long the top of every list of DVD requests, The African Queen (Paramount) makes its much anticipated debut on DVD and Blu-ray simultaneously. It was worth the wait: this is a stunning presentation, but more on that later. The pedigree is impeccable: Sam
- [In Black & White: Big Bad Wolves: Masculinity in the American Film](https://parallax-view.org/in-black-white-big-bad-wolves-masculinity-in-the-american-film/): [Originally published in Movietone News 60-61, February 1979] BIG BAD WOLVES: Masculinity in the American Film. By Joan Mellen. Pantheon. 368 pages. $12.95. If memory serves, Professor Joan Mellen is not a fan of Pauline Kael's, but the two ladies have things in common. Both have the (fortunately) rare gift of being simultaneously very readable
- [Review: Death on the Nile](https://parallax-view.org/review-death-on-the-nile-2/): [Originally published in Movietone News 60-61, February 1979] If your friendly neighbourhood TV station or film society is tonight showing an uncut print of Clair's And Then There Were None or Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution, you need not miss such delights in favour of Death on the Nile. But if not, you could do worse
- [Out of the Past: King of Kings](https://parallax-view.org/out-of-the-past-king-of-kings/): [Originally published in Movietone News 60-61, February 1979] Seek and thou shalt find ... or not, as the case may be. There is by now a good deal of useful critical writing available in English on the work of every film buff's favourite genius maudit, Nicholas Ray. But Ray experts fall curiously taciturn on the
- [Review: Moonraker](https://parallax-view.org/review-moonraker/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] The title song to Moonraker, sung by Shirley Bassey, sets the tone for the latest James Bond film: gentle, inoffensive, almost sweet. This is not the audience-affronting, brassy Bassey of Goldfinger or Diamonds Are Forever; and of John Barry's score, even the recycled, tried-and-true music from previous
- [Review: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)](https://parallax-view.org/review-invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-1978/): [Originally published in slightly different form in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Scribbling a few notes in 1975 after seeing Phil Kaufman's The White Dawn, I wrote: "Culture conflict is a key element in Kaufman's work. The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid deals with the incursion of a group of relative primitives into the bustling world
- [Review: Hardcore](https://parallax-view.org/review-hardcore/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Paul Schrader's concept for Hardcore strikes me as a great idea for a movie. But he has overwritten it so shamelessly and directed it so hamhandedly that the result is a shambles. Much of Hardcore is handled so ineptly I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Long
- [Review: The Dark](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-dark/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] The Dark looks for all the world as if it had started life as a detective murder-mystery and was recut and redubbed to cash in on the science fiction vogue. The film's continuity stresses the methodical work of the police in tracking down a killer, even after
- [Review: The China Syndrome](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-china-syndrome/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] The China Syndrome didn't have to be about nuclear power. A serviceable suspense thriller about a few people's public responsibility—or lack thereof—could be built on any number of contemporary issues. Nuclear power works so spectacularly well here, however, because of its enormity of risk. Proponents of nuclear
- [Review: North Dallas Forty](https://parallax-view.org/review-north-dallas-forty/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] You don't have to care or even know much about football to enjoy North Dallas Forty. Ted Kotcheff doesn't seem to know much about football either, but that didn't stop him from making a film about it. Well, no, not really. North Dallas Forty is barely about
- [Review: Bloodline](https://parallax-view.org/review-bloodline/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] There are certain questions that tend to come up in the dark nights of the critical soul, like ferinstance: How, in a just universe, can there be a greater resemblance between the basest, most incompetent shlock and art of a very high and rarified degree, than between.
- [Review: Quintet](https://parallax-view.org/review-quintet/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Quintet is one of those things that Robert Altman makes from time to time: an unoriginal, lumberingly obvious, altogether hokey script coupled with a visual and aural atmosphere so overpowering that one wishes to forgive the film its lack of narrative integrity out of respect for what
- [Review: Sammie's Bicycle](https://parallax-view.org/review-sammies-bicycle/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] A young girl with a boy's name is about to have a birthday party that is, to her, emblematic of the beginnings of womanhood, while two old friends are planning their gift to her, a bicycle. Not only is it not the appropriate gift for a girl
- [Review: The In-Laws](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-in-laws/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Arthur Hiller tends to hedge his "serious" film bets by covering them with near-simultaneous releases of comedies. The In-Laws covers Nightwing in much the same way that The Out-of-Towners covered Love Story in 1970. And now, as then, the comedy is the better effort. The strength of
- [Review: The Deer Hunter](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-deer-hunter/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Terry Curtis Fox, writing in Film Comment, seems to have been the only one to point out the rather obvious fact that The Deer Hunter isn’t really about the Vietnam War. Director Michael Cimino is much more interested in how change comes to the safe, closed world
- [Review: The Seduction of Joe Tynan](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-seduction-of-joe-tynan/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Alan Alda is an unimpeachably right guy. He’s attractive, intelligent, multifariously talented, and probably good for the ecology. He is a model of sociopolitical conscientiousness, and a 100-percent masculine romantic icon without a touch of male-chauvinist-piggery. No matter how often or deservedly his talents (acting, writing, directing)
- [Howling at the Screen: The Wolfman](https://parallax-view.org/howling-at-the-screen-the-wolfman/): That Universal’s visually sanguine yet emotionally bloodless revival of their most ferocious and most tragic movie monster is a complete stiff is beyond debate. The real question is how anyone can direct this story, at heart about a man under a curse that transforms him from a moral being into a beastly predator and then
- [Interview: Eddie Muller, the Ambassador of Film Noir](https://parallax-view.org/interview-eddie-muller-the-ambassador-of-film-noir/): Author, critic, film authority and festival programmer Eddie Muller was branded "The Czar of Noir" by James Ellroy for his knowledge of and passion for the subject. Since publishing Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir and programming a film noir festival in Los Angeles in 1998, Muller has become not simply the most
- [Review: Diary of Forbidden Dreams (aka What?)](https://parallax-view.org/review-diary-of-forbidden-dreams-aka-what/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] What's being called Diary of Forbidden Dreams or simply Forbidden Dreams in its current run is actually Roman Polanski's 1972 opus What?, being released in the U.S. for the first time to cash in on the director's recent notoriety. Like Dance of the Vampires, which he made
- [Review: The Muppet Movie](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-muppet-movie/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] The Muppet Movie is dedicated “to the memory and magic of Edgar Bergen,” who died shortly after doing his cameo role in the film. In that scene, Bergen and Charlie McCarthy are seen in the audience as fans attending a puppet show at a county fair—a puppet
- [Review: Prophecy](https://parallax-view.org/review-prophecy/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Prophecy is actually two films, one of which I like. In the first hour or so the creature that’s been terrorizing the Maine woods is posited as both victim and avenger, much in the spirit of the put-upon creatures of Jack Arnold’s monster movies of the Fifties.
- [Review: Death on the Nile](https://parallax-view.org/review-death-on-the-nile/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] In the drawingroom detective story—whether literary or cinematic or both—the central feature of the genre’s art is also its one great failing: the form gives away the content. We know we are witnessing a genre-piece, circumstantial evidence that in “real life” would be insufficient to damn instead
- [True Fiction: Kathryn Bigelow on 'The Hurt Locker'](https://parallax-view.org/true-fiction-kathryn-bigelow-on-the-hurt-locker/): The Hurt Locker premiered in the one-two punch of the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival in the fall of 2008 and then made the long march through subsequent film festivals until its theatrical release in June 2009. Director Kathryn Bigelow shepherded the film through each showing, giving interviews every step of
- [Last Call for Nearly 30 Criterion DVDs (and one Blu-ray)](https://parallax-view.org/last-call-for-nearly-30-criterion-dvds-and-one-blu-ray/): Just in this week on the Criterion website: Criterion is losing the rights a number of titles in their collection in March. (See the original post on Criterion Currents here.) The home video rights to a number of films from the StudioCanal library will go to Lionsgate at the end of March. The Criterion editions
- [The Loveless Worlds of Kathryn Bigelow](https://parallax-view.org/the-loveless-worlds-of-kathryn-bigelow/): First things first: We’re not jumping on the Bigelow Bandwagon here. We’ve known from the beginning. We saw the promise in The Loveless and Blue Steel and the genius in Near Dark and Strange Days, defended Point Break and K-19: The Widowmaker against detractors who saw them as nothing more than shallow pandering to the
- [The Way You Don't Die: The Hurt Locker](https://parallax-view.org/the-way-you-dont-die-the-hurt-locker/): [expanded from a review originally published on seanax.com, July 2009] "Tell me something. What's the best way to disarm one of these things?" "The way you don't die, sir." Set in the current Iraq war, after the proclamation of "Mission Accomplished" and the transformation of a battlefield army into an occupation force, The Hurt Locker
- [Black Arts](https://parallax-view.org/black-arts/): [originally published in Film Comment Volume 31, Number 5, September/October 1995] Kathryn Bigelow's 1987 genre-juicing vampire film Near Dark opens close up on a leggy mosquito poised to tap into screen-spanning flesh. Apt epigraph for a film about heartland bloodsuckers; but also your ticket into any of the intensely sensual, romantically nihilistic excursion - The
- [One last list of lists for 2009 – The Year in Cinema](https://parallax-view.org/one-last-list-of-lists-for-2009-the-year-in-cinema/): Squeezing in just before the Oscar nominations are announced, here are a few final lists and remarks from Parallax View contributors and friends, along with those published by Seattle top critics, as a snapshot of the way we see 2009. Sean Axmaker A dozen for this list, including two 2008 national releases that debuted in
- [A Sort of 10-Best-Films-of-2009 List from My Niche](https://parallax-view.org/a-sort-of-10-best-films-of-2009-list-from-my-niche/): I’m not an adventurous filmgoer. Meaning I’m very seldom in the house for a first-run Hollywood picture. There’s generally a lag of a few years – during which a film acquires something of a reputation, or maybe I caught part on it on television – that I’ll check it out more fully. And then –
- [Review: Watership Down](https://parallax-view.org/review-watership-down/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Establishing a mythology of creation and existence based upon the centrality of rabbits in the frame of things, Watership Down endows itself with a mythic sense that takes a familiar shape. It divides roughly into three parts: the first of these deals with the journey of a
- [Review: Martin](https://parallax-view.org/review-martin/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] “All aboard!” cries a voice at the opening of Martin and, as in The Crazies, George Romero's fast cutting draws us in and pushes us forward on this crazy train ride. In Martin Romero uses closeup detail—more of objects than of people—to create a pattern of images,
- [Review: Dawn of the Dead](https://parallax-view.org/review-dawn-of-the-dead/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Part Two of George Romero's projected Dead trilogy begins almost literally where Night of the Living Dead left off, though it is stylistically closer to the comic-book look of The Crazies. This time Romero's plunging in media res is even more violent and merciless than before, the
- [Review: Cuba](https://parallax-view.org/review-cuba-2/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] When Hitchcock had to set a spy movie in Switzerland, he decided that the most effective way to exploit the milieu would be to honor an armchair tourist’s idea of the place. Hence, he built his plot and key sequences around those geographical and cultural phenomena most
- [Review: The Great Train Robbery](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-great-train-robbery/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] It's fairly hard, and also somewhat presumptuous and pointless, to try and get a fix on the directing career of the prolific writer Michael Crichton after only three films. Westworld would seem as different from Coma as Coma is from The Great Train Robbery (called The First
- [Review: Firepower](https://parallax-view.org/review-firepower/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Having ripped off just about every other kind of commercial movie, Michael Winner has inevitably turned his attention to the Bond-style action thriller. Since the Bond films have been ripping themselves off for the past dozen or so years, the pilferings involved in Firepower don't seem too
- [Eric Rohmer (1920-2010)](https://parallax-view.org/eric-rohmer-1920-2010/): Watching an Eric Rohmer film was famously described by Harry Moseby, the Gene Hackman character in Arthur Penn’s Night Moves, (1975) (in a line quoted in both Rohmer’s Wikipedia entry and his New York Times obituary), as “like watching paint dry.” It’s my favorite movie line about a film-maker, and—along with de Niro’s bounty-hunter in
- [Review: The Medusa Touch](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-medusa-touch/): [Originally published in slightly different form in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] The Medusa Touch has had a most curious history. Richard Burton went into it hot on the heels of Exorcist II and Equus, but it took about a year to follow them into the cinemas, opening in London in June of 1978. Despite
- [Review: The Thirty-Nine Steps](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-thirty-nine-steps/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Remaking a Hitchcock classic would appear to be prime foolishness (unless you're Hitchcock himself), and remaking one a second time seems like evidence of a death-wish. However, the makers of this new version of The Thirty-Nine Steps do have a get-out clause of sorts: Hitchcock used almost
- [Review: The Europeans](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-europeans/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] With the likes of Grease and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre packin' 'em in, people keep saying the cinema is going to hell and only the most crass hold sway. However, if the Seventies gave the world porno and John Travolta, the decade also saw a revival, on
- [Review: Comes a Horseman](https://parallax-view.org/review-comes-a-horseman/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] The title of Alan J Pakula's latest film echoes the old stock melodrama line “Along comes Jones” and that's no accident. Here we have a tough-but-tender cowgirl working her dead father's ranch with only a lovable grizzled old coot for a ranchhand; a somber villain moving through
- [Review: The Corn is Green](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-corn-is-green/): [Originally published in slightly different form in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Emlyn Williams's play The Corn Is Green is nothing if not aptly titled. Williams has always been a minor writer, and when writing about his homeland, Wales, which is also my homeland, he has been particularly unimpressive. He writes for tourists - coy jokes,
- [Out of the Past: The Illustrated Man](https://parallax-view.org/out-of-the-past-the-illustrated-man/): [Originally published in slightly different form in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Before anything happens in The Illustrated Man, a voice (Claire Bloom's) warns us that those who try to see beyond their own times find themselves facing problems that cannot be explained in present-day terms. This gets reprised at the very end of the
- [Moments out of Time 1996](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1996/): [originally published in Film Comment Volume 33 Number 1, January/February 1997, reprinted by permission] • The car materializing out of the whited-out mystery of snow/land/sky—the opening of Fargo... • The English Patient: closeup, the look of pearls against Kristin Scott Thomas's sweat-dampened throat ... rediscovering the sensuality of the camera eye... • Nobody (Gary Farmer)
- [Moments out of Time 1999](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1999/): [originally published in Film Comment Volume 36 Number 1, January/February 2000, reprinted by permission] • The middle-aged Gerald (Alain Libolt) taking out his glasses to look at a photo of a woman who may become his wife—Eric Rohmer's golden Autumn Tale... • One of those days it's a minute away from snowing: the dancing bag,
- [The Devil in the Details: "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus"](https://parallax-view.org/the-devil-in-the-details-the-imaginarium-of-dr-parnassus/): A rickety wedge of a gypsy wagon with walls a couple of stories high wobbles through modern London streets, pulled by a couple of tired horses and carrying a tired old souse playing out the role of the carny showman on pure instinct. These traveling players could have ridden right out of the medieval era
- [Moments out of Time 1997](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1997/): [originally published in Film Comment Volume 34 Number 1, January/February 1998, reprinted by permission] • The death of Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), L.A. Confidential: The gunshot comes as a cinematically rare and genuine shock, but this is crowned by a supreme actor's-moment: Jack's multivalenced chuckle—shoulda known better—as he plants the clue with which his killer
- [Moments out of Time 1998](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1998/): [originally published in Film Comment Volume 35 Number 1, January/February 1999, reprinted by permission] • Shrapnel hanging in the air, every shard in razor-sharp focus, as if molecules of the film itself had been startled out of the emulsion by the battle: Saving Private Ryan... • A bird born dying in battle: The Thin Red
- [It's Garry Shandling's Interview (with Sean Axmaker)](https://parallax-view.org/its-garry-shandlings-interview-with-sean-axmaker/): Earlier in 2009, Shout! Factory released one of the greatest TV comedies of all time. It's Garry Shandling's Show was created for Showtime in 1986, back before pay cable had established a reputation for original programming. As such, it never really became well known to the general public but it's reputation among TV writers and
- [Good Things in Big Packages: DVD Box Sets of 2009](https://parallax-view.org/good-things-in-big-packages-dvd-box-sets-of-2009/): I'm winding down my year in DVD coverage with this highly subjective survey of the box sets of 2009 that brought new titles to DVD (no collections of previously released titles in new packages here). To be clear, I didn't see every set that came along, or even every film in those that I did
- [Moments out of Time 2005](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-2005/): [originally published in Steadycam No. 49, February 2006] • Broken Flowers: Bill Murray fitting himself around a forkful of perfectly formed carrot slices... • The Squid and the Whale: The father (Jeff Daniels), coming by what is no longer his own home to pick up one of his sons, points at a TV set and
- [Moments out of Time 1992](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1992/): [originally published in Film Comment Volume 29 Number 1, January-February 1993, reprinted by permission] • The wait by the tree, and how Will Munny drinks after getting the news, Unforgiven: as director and actor, Clint Eastwood in excelsis... • "The pleasure was all 'mine"—The Crying Game.... • The Player: The fax curling out of the
- [Moments out of Time 1994](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1994/): [originally published in Film Comment Volume 31 Number 1, January-February 1995, reprinted by permission] • At the beginning of Pulp Fiction, Amanda Plummer laying her head on the coffeeshop table and smiling: "I'm not gonna kill anybody".... • Just-right treatment of place, climate, community in the main-title sequence of Nobody's Fool... • Bunny (Bill Murray)
- [Moments out of Time 1995](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1995/): [Originally published in Film Comment Volume 32 Number 1, January/February 1996, reprinted by permission] • Oriental views of train bridges into Brooklyn, Smoke... • Birds, insects, air: the sounds around the Roseman Bridge, The Bridges of Madison County... • 1948 sunshine, and a rapturously integral job of period re-creation that never preens as such—Devil in
- [DVD Discoveries and Rediscoveries 2009](https://parallax-view.org/dvd-discoveries-and-rediscoveries-2009/): My oh my how spoiled we get. Once upon a time, we cult hounds would hunt through neighborhood video stores to uncover off-brand VHS releases of obscure Italian horror films and dubbed editions of foreign movies, which we would devour no matter how grainy the transfer or censored the print. Now, more than ten year
- [Ten DVD Releases That Made 2009 Great](https://parallax-view.org/ten-dvd-releases-that-made-2009-great/): I've done my "Best of 2009 on DVD and Blu-ray" list for MSN, which features the usual mix of films old and new and packages creative, lavish and otherwise really, really cool. Here I'd like to do something a little different. This isn't about the greatest transfers, the most splendiferous supplements, the coolest commentaries, the
- [TV on DVD 2009 – The Great, the Rediscovered and the Timeless](https://parallax-view.org/tv-on-dvd-2009-the-great-the-rediscovered-and-the-timeless/): What I love about TV on DVD is the sense of discovery, of rediscovery and celebration of great television from all eras. You'll not find Lost or Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles or even The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency on this list. Those shows and other hit series and cult shows and top-notch special
- [Moments out of Time 1993](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1993/): [Originally published in Film Comment Volume 30 Number 1, January/February 1994, reprinted by permission] • Willing his warmest fantasy—Ellen Olenska's embrace—into motion behind him, Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) gazes out at a window-framed winter's cape along the Hudson: the aesthetics of desire in The Age of Innocence... • The one that got away in Short
- [Moments out of Time 1990](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1990/): [Originally published in Film Comment Volume 27 Number 1, January/February 1991, reprinted by permission] • The hat in the forest, Miller's Crossing... • GoodFellas: The sheer, abstract, utterly genuine terror of the warehouse at the end of the block, where Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) wants Karen (Lorraine Bracco) to stop in and pick out
- [Moments out of Time 1991](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1991/): [Originally published in Film Comment Volume 28 Number 1, January/February 1992, reprinted by permission] • Best shot of the year: A motorcycle tops a rise on a lonely road in sagebrush country, followed (though not, strictly, pursued) a beat later by a police car. The timing of the vehicles' apparition; the casual left-to-right pan that
- [Moments out of Time 1971](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-1971/): [Originally published in Movietone News 10, January 1972] Recalled by Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy • Every moment Dominique Sanda's feline beauty appears in The Conformist or, more specifically: Dominique Sanda's Sternbergian entrance under a bare, harsh, deifying light bulb; Dominique Sanda's hands-in-pockets slouch down the hallway, a cigarette dangling from her lips; Dominique
- ["Somebody's Fiddle": Traditional Music in "The Searchers"](https://parallax-view.org/somebodys-fiddle-traditional-music-in-the-searchers/): Martin Pawley has barged into Charlie McCorry's wedding to Martin's childhood sweetheart Laurie Jorgenson, and the two have waded into a typically Fordian brawl—momentary comic relief from the darker concerns of most of The Searchers. Suddenly, Charlie interrupts the fistfight: “Somebody's fiddle!” he cautions, picking up an overlooked musical instrument and handing it hastily out
- [Something to Do With Death: A Fistful of Sergio Leone](https://parallax-view.org/something-to-do-with-death-a-fistful-of-sergio-leone/): [originally published in Film Comment Vol. 9 No. 2, March-April, 1973] Early in 1967, United Artists undertook a massive publicity campaign to sell the country on a recent acquisition that had broken box-office records in its native Italy and might, just might do the same in the States. After all, its inspiration was American—what more
- ["It doesn't take any imagination at all to feel awed" – Peter Weir](https://parallax-view.org/it-doesnt-take-any-imagination-at-all-to-feel-awed-peter-weir/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Peter Weir was interviewed by Judith Kass in New York City on January 8, 1979, in connection with the U.S. opening of his new film The Last Wave. The Last Wave concerns a lawyer, played by Richard Chamberlain, who defends five aborigines accused of killing a sixth
- [Rejoicing about things Australian: Phillip Noyce](https://parallax-view.org/rejoicing-about-things-australian-phillip-noyce/): [Originally published in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] Judith M. Kass interviewed Phillip Noyce, the director of Newsfront, and David Rowe, the production and marketing consultant for the New South Wales Film Corporation, when they were in New York City in September 1978 for the film's showing at the Lincoln Center Film Festival. Newsfront uses
- [A Hole in the Heart of Man, Out At the Edge of the World: Some Remarks On the Cinema of Lisandro Alonso](https://parallax-view.org/a-hole-in-the-heart-of-man-out-at-the-edge-of-the-world-some-remarks-on-the-cinema-of-lisandro-alonso/): [Published in conjunction with NWFF's Hot Splice] “Why is manhood… an endless highway?” – Adam Zagajewski, Tierra del Fuego The NWFF is to be commended for presenting a rare coup: a cycle of films that taken together evince a dedicated and visionary artist at work, the Argentine director Lisandro Alonso. The devoted following that Alonso's
- ["Everything happens at its appointed time" - Picnic at Hanging Rock](https://parallax-view.org/everything-happens-at-its-appointed-time-picnic-at-hanging-rock/): [Originally published in slightly different form in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] This is the second feature film from director Peter Weir, the first being the uneven but fitfully brilliant The Cars That Ate Paris in 1973. Though that movie was too scrappy to make Weir seem more than extremely promising, Picnic at Hanging Rock is something else:
- [Lisandro Alonso in Seattle and At the Edge of the World](https://parallax-view.org/lisandro-alonso-in-seattle-and-in-the-world/): The films of Lisandro Alonso, one of the most exciting and accomplished directors working to redefine filmmaking on the international stage, are showcased in Northwest Film Forum's series “At the Edge Of The World: The Cinema of Lisandro Alonso” (November 11-20). The young filmmaker (in his early thirties) has made four features since his debut, La
- [Review: Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens](https://parallax-view.org/review-beneath-the-valley-of-the-ultravixens/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Russ Meyer's Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens is a rowdy, funky, and occasionally obnoxious comedy which just happens to be one of the livelier entertainments of 1979. Meyer, of course, has long been known as an uncommonly talented filmmaker on the burlesque-house side of the industry,
- [Review: The Silent Witness](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-silent-witness/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] The Silent Witness is a 60-minute British documentary about the controversial Shroud of Turin, which contains a full facial and bodily image of a dead man who may or may not have been Jesus Christ. Producer-director David W. Rolfe figures—and rightly so—that few people will be likely
- [Review: Time After Time](https://parallax-view.org/review-time-after-time/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] The time-travel premise of Time after Time is coyly signified by the use of the old Warner Brothers logo music of the Forties over the opening of the film; but in this self-billed "ingenious entertainment," most of the ingenuity lies in the conception, very little in the
- [Lisandro Alonso: Space, Time, Cinema](https://parallax-view.org/lisandro-alonso-space-time-cinema/): It's surely dawned on Seattle cineastes that program director of Northwest Film Forum, Adam Sekular, has an affection for films that are minimalist portraits in time. Think back to the retrospectives of Pedro Costa and Albert Serra, as well as numerous defiantly non-commercial films on calendars past that are uniquely individual, resolutely observational and more
- [Review: Windows](https://parallax-view.org/review-windows/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] When Richard Fleischer visited the Seattle Film Society last spring, he bridled at the suggestion that Sven Nykvist, rather than he, had been responsible for the frame compositions in The Last Run: "That's something a lot of people don't understand." Certainly no theory of film directing I
- [Review: When Time Ran Out...](https://parallax-view.org/review-when-time-ran-out/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Going in, Irwin Allen's latest disaster movie sounds as if it ought to be the ultimate in the genre. Entitled When Time Ran Out..., complete with ellipsis, and based on a novel called The Day the World Ended, the picture starts off with science-fiction-y images of a
- [Review: Time After Time](https://parallax-view.org/review-time-after-time-2/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Nicholas Meyer, the popular novelist who contrived the meeting of Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud in The Seven Per Cent Solution, and Holmes, Bernard Shaw, and a Jack the Ripper–style murderer in The West End Horror, has followed colleague Michael Crichton into the movie-directing racket; and I
- [Review: The Black Marble](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-black-marble/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] The second of his books that he has personally seen to the screen, Joseph Wambaugh’s The Black Marble might have been a better movie if Wambaugh & co. had not so assiduously aimed for a PG rating, and included more of the novel’s amusing raunch, verbal and
- [Review: Star Trek - The Motion Picture](https://parallax-view.org/review-star-trek-the-motion-picture/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Regarding the immense, murky, superintelligent cloud that threatens to destroy the planet Earth, one anonymous spaceperson remarks, “There must be something incredible inside generating it!” I wish the same could be said for the immense Star Trek—The Motion Picture, which disappoints by seeming to have no driving
- [Review: The Rose](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-rose/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] "You know, I'm so tired of the road," sighs Bette Midler into a telephone near the end of the film. There's a hesitation in her voice on the word 'road' as if she were going to say, "I'm so tired of The Rose" instead. This would not
- [Review: Cuba](https://parallax-view.org/review-cuba/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Robert Dapes (Sean Connery) is a British mercenary who arrives in Cuba to help train soldiers for Batista's collapsing regime. When he checks in with the British embassy on his arrival, he is informed by an official (who gingerly supports Batista—until the prevailing winds blow from another
- [Review: The Life of Brian](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-life-of-brian/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Ordinarily, nothing would be further from the point about Monty Python's Life of Brian than the film's reverence or lack of same toward the Christian faith. But with the film widely condemned, and even cancelled, on the basis of "blasphemy" and "sacrilege," the issue becomes germane. Personally,
- [Review: The Runner Stumbles](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-runner-stumbles/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Though The Runner Stumbles fails to grasp what it reaches for, it offers some surprisingly telling moments in its humble look at the crisis of faith versus self-interest. The weight of the film is on the shoulders of Dick Van Dyke as a maverick priest exiled to
- [Review: The Onion Field](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-onion-field/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Truth may be stranger than fiction, but it is almost always less interesting. The challenge facing Wambaugh in bringing his novelized “true story” to the screen was to preserve the interest and intensity that the actual events held for those who participated in them—to try to make
- [Review: Alien](https://parallax-view.org/review-alien/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] As a horror movie, Alien is appropriately concerned with collective nightmares (being chased and caught; the monster is below us, now above us; someone we know is, in fact, not human), and lustfully derivative of the genre's white-middle-class fears that give rise to the nightmares (loss of
- [Review: Quadrophenia](https://parallax-view.org/review-quadrophenia/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] The movie starts out with a pretty good indication of what it’s going to be made of: A young man stares out over the golden ocean towards the sun, then turns and walks toward the camera, his silhouette remaining in the streak of sun on the waves.
- [Review: Yanks](https://parallax-view.org/review-yanks/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Yanks is probably John Schlesinger’s best movie since Sunday Bloody Sunday, and certainly one of the best of his career. But for me that’s not really saying much, since I continue to have serious problems with this director’s approach, a self-congratulatory mock-sensitivity that seems insincere at best
- [Review: Hollywood's Wild Angel](https://parallax-view.org/review-hollywoods-wild-angel/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] I've never had the opportunity to see Allan Arkush and Joe Dante's Hollywood Boulevard;on the other hand, I suspect that I saw a fair portion of it in Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel,Christian Blackwood's genial film dossier on Roger Corman, whose New World Pictures released the movie.
- [Review: American Gigolo](https://parallax-view.org/review-american-gigolo/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Here’s the problem: (1) American Gigolo has just garnered a set of bad reviews of a kind that tell much more about reviewers, their blind spots and complacent assumptions, than they do about the movie. One would love to rub their professional faces in it, except that
- [Review: The Wanderers](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-wanderers/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] One of the most affecting moments in Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers was the swamping of the soundtrack with an amplified-bagpipe version of “Amazing Grace” as the remaining human searched the night world for a means of escape. The cargo ship whose radio is the
- [Review: 10](https://parallax-view.org/review-10/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Blake Edwards’s new film is really the oldest story in the world, done up with refreshing wit and literacy and the slightest touch of softcore porn. 10 is a balanced and honest look at romantic love and the sexual world of the artist as a prematurely middle-aged
- [Review: Yanks](https://parallax-view.org/review-yanks-2/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] As the donkey regards the carrot, so John Schlesinger looks on his screenplays: he either follows or swallows them. A follow-my-leader under the deadly misapprehension that he is an auteur, Schlesinger is happiest when partnering writers who share his tendency to scream Look at me, I'm an
- [Review: The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-private-files-of-j-edgar-hoover/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] "...[W]e are afflicted with a secret police of a sort which I do not think a democratic republic ought to support. In theory, the FBI is necessary. For the investigation of crime. But in all the years that the FBI has been in existence, the major criminals
- [Bertolucci's 'Luna': The Surrealist's Stratagem](https://parallax-view.org/bertoluccis-luna-the-surrealists-stratagem/): By Peter Hogue and Marion Bronson [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Luna is just a word, a magic word, by means of which everyone can project his or her own dream. The moon, of course, is a very rich symbol, but the only reference to it I'd accept is the simplest one:
- ["I like horror movies that look like horror movies" - An Interview with Dave Parker](https://parallax-view.org/i-like-horror-movies-that-look-like-horror-movies-an-interview-with-dave-parker/): As big-screen horror becomes increasingly focused on remakes and endless sequels, I find that the most interesting horror films on the small screen. Of course there's a lot of the entrails of horror movie waste to wade through to get to the meaty specimens, but Dave Parker is one name that I've been on the
- [Halloween: Seattle Style](https://parallax-view.org/halloween-seattle-style/): In his latest video report, Seattle Times writer Mark Rahner heads into the "Twilight" Zone to raise a little hell in Forks—the rural Washington town that is the setting for Stephenie Meier's popular teen-vampire books and films. You can't afford to miss the result, here at the Seattle Times website. And while we're on about
- [DVD Tricks and Treats: Small Screen Halloween Picks](https://parallax-view.org/dvd-tricks-and-treats-small-screen-halloween-picks/): Instead of the usual "best of" countdown of familiar classics, here's a look at some of the more interesting horrors that have arrived on DVD within the last year. (Reviews originally published on seanax.com) Direct to DVD: The Hills Run Red (Warner) is the rare self-aware horror by an unabashed fan of the genre that
- [Review: Halloween](https://parallax-view.org/review-halloween/): [Originally published in Movietone News 60-61, February 1979] A thing that bugs me about the vast majority of contemporary films is, they rarely give the feeling anyone cared much about framing them. The movement away from studio (i.e., factory) filmmaking has had a lot to do with this. Advancements in film speed, equipment mobility, and
- [Kubrick's Shining](https://parallax-view.org/kubricks-shining/): [originally published in Film Comment, July-August 1980] Camera comes in low over an immense Western lake, its destination apparently a small island at center that seems to consist of nothing but treetops. Draw nearer, then sweep over and pass the island, skewing slightly now in search of a central focus at the juncture of lake
- [Out of the Past: Skidoo](https://parallax-view.org/out-of-the-past-skidoo/): [Originally published in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Otto Preminger's stabs at comedy are few, and none got more lethal notices than this one. The public stayed away and even Preminger's customary apologists avoided it. Gerald Pratley's book on the director doesn't actually make much of a case for it, just hints that the film
- [Limeys in Lotusland: "The Loved One" Reappraised](https://parallax-view.org/limeys-in-lotusland-the-loved-one-reappraised/): [Originally published in slightly different form in Movietone News 64-65, March 1980] Shortly after World War II there occurred a meeting as potent, in its own way, as the confrontation of Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man: Evelyn Waugh went Hollywood. M-G-M had purchased the film rights to Brideshead Revisited and its eccentric author had
- [Review: Zulu Dawn](https://parallax-view.org/review-zulu-dawn/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] It comes as no surprise that Douglas Hickox directed hundreds of commercials before starting on feature films: he has means, but not ends. When it comes to assembling the departments of a large unit into some semblance of professional order, or arranging a succession of individually striking,
- [Review: Violette et Francois](https://parallax-view.org/review-violette-et-francois/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Jacques Rouffio has managed this cautionary account of the non-paying aspects of petty crime very slickly indeed. Violette (Isabelle Adjani) and François (Jacques Dutronc) are two highly irresponsible, lazy, unthinking, shallow and immoral young people, but following their adventures doesn't overdistance us from them. It's not that
- [The Reckless Moment: Max Ophuls' Masterpiece of Middle Class America](https://parallax-view.org/the-reckless-moment-max-ophuls-masterpiece-of-middle-class-america/): The thirty-second year of the Seattle Art Museum's annual Film Noir Cycle, "the granddaddy of the world's film noir festivals," opens with one of the most unheralded masterpieces of shadowy American melodrama: The Reckless Moment (1949), directed by continental stylist Max Ophuls (shortened to "Opuls" for his American screen credits). Known for his visual taste
- [Dragons and Tigers at VIFF 2009](https://parallax-view.org/dragons-and-tigers-at-viff-2009/): Seattle boasts the biggest film festival in the United States, in terms of both audiences and films shown. But Seattle filmgoers are also lucky enough to be within easy driving distance to the Vancouver International Film Festival, one of the five biggest festivals in North America. Coming on the heels of Toronto, it boasts a
- ["And then I just go ahead and write that dialogue" - John Sayles [Part 3]](https://parallax-view.org/and-then-i-just-go-ahead-and-write-that-dialogue-john-sayles-part-3/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Continued from "Part 2" here. How do you feel about writing these low-budget films? Do you see advantages in it, or are you hungry for millions of dollars per budget? If I had millions of dollars I'd probably make millions of small films. Part of it is
- [Review: The Sea Wolves](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-sea-wolves/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Time was when people talked (pretty foolishly) about Andrew V. McLaglen as heir to the mantle of John Ford, and the name of Howard Hawks has been known to surface as a reference point, too. The Sea Wolves, however, demonstrates an affinity with the world of British
- [Review: McVicar](https://parallax-view.org/review-mcvicar/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] McVicar isn't a bad film, but it emphatically fails to be the brilliant one it could have been. Director and co-writer Tom Clegg not only hasn't solved the problems inherent in the material, he hasn't faced them; maybe he didn't notice they were there. The story is
- [Review: Making "The Shining"](https://parallax-view.org/review-making-the-shining/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Time flies. The six-year-old brat in quest of an intergalactic bushbaby in 2001 is now all grown up and directing her own documentary film about what is only the third movie her father has directed since that 1968 masterwork. Televised by the BBC at a length of
- [Review: En Och En (One and One)](https://parallax-view.org/review-en-och-en-one-and-one/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] How, one wonders, did the three directors of this odd seriocomic romance-tragedy divide up the responsibilities? Did Josephson direct Thulin's solo scenes and Thulin Josephson's, with Nykvist handling all the scenes they're in together (the majority)? Or was it a case of everyone mucking in, the two
- [Review: Dites-lui que je l'aime (This Sweet Sickness)](https://parallax-view.org/review-dites-lui-que-je-laime-this-sweet-sickness/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] MTN 55's Tracking Shot noted: "Is that the best way? Novelist Patricia Highsmith saw her Strangers on a Train become a film classic under the direction of Alfred Hitchcock, but she rejected Hitch's offer to direct her This Sweet Sickness. Claude Miller inherits the job." Aha, but wait.
- [Review: Bronco Billy](https://parallax-view.org/review-bronco-billy-2/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Clint Eastwood's seventh excursion as director takes a stab at the territory of rustic fun, presumably as a follow-up to James Fargo's Eastwood-starred Every Which Way But Loose. The problem is that the screenplay for Bronco Billy, which details the adventures of a modern-day cowboy and his
- [Review: Honeysuckle Rose](https://parallax-view.org/review-honeysuckle-rose/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Honeysuckle Rose is apparently so sure of its audience that it isn’t the least concerned about having a good story to tell. The film, of course, is a vehicle for Willie Nelson, but regardless of whether you’re one of this popular singer’s fans, you can’t help feeling
- [Review: The Black Stallion](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-black-stallion/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] The Black Stallion is more pretty than beautiful, more contrived than inspired. In reporting on the San Francisco Film Festival last fall, I wrote: “The Black Stallion, directed by Carroll Ballard for Francis Coppola's Omni Zoetrope, was clearly a success with its ‘hometown’ audience. It’s an adaptation
- [Review: Coal Miner's Daughter](https://parallax-view.org/review-coal-miners-daughter/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] The very title of this film, and of the Loretta Lynn autobiography on which it is based—in turn, from a song of hers—underlines some of the tensions within the movie: Coal Miner's Daughter rather than, say, The Loretta Lynn Story implies a reliance on another for purposes
- [Review: The Changeling](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-changeling/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Perhaps it's looking back from the vantage point of a cinematically uninspiring summer that makes The Changeling seem such inoffensive fun. The qualities that The Changeling can boast—a clean, controlled look, a handful of chills, the feeling that the filmmakers are not about to shortchange us even
- [Review: Can't Stop the Music](https://parallax-view.org/review-cant-stop-the-music/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Disbelief. Right in the middle of the “Y.M.C.A.” number, which is right in the middle of Can't Stop the Music, one feels one's mouth actually hanging open. Good grief! Is this really happening? Members of a musical group called the Village People (who play streetwise dudes recruited
- [Review: The Big Red One](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-big-red-one/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Trying to flag down a notion of just how “pure cinema”—Hitchcock's term—works is tricky. The implication is that there is a level on which film operates which is undetectable by those who are unwilling or untrained. Sounds kinda elitist, I'm sure, but this is probably why many
- [Review: Best Boy](https://parallax-view.org/review-best-boy/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] The line between cool observation and active participation in a documentary film is a flimsy and untenable one. How can anything remain truly documentary with a camera whirring away as an extra guest keeping its unblinking eye focused on the people it considers? If the project is
- [Review: The Shining](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-shining/): [Originally published in slightly different form in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Stephen King’s The Shining is basically a novel of character: Isolated with his family for a winter at a snowed-in resort hotel, Jack Torrance faces the collapse of his own mind from an overload of alcoholism, suppressed violence, writer’s block, and personal failure.
- [Review: Rough Cut](https://parallax-view.org/review-rough-cut/): [Originally published in slightly different form in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] A gas burner fills a huge balloon with hot air, sending it adrift above a palatial estate, whose lawn mills with partying rich folk: a suitable image to begin Rough Cut, a lightweight entertainment that insists on consorting with only the richest tastes.
- [Review: My Bodyguard](https://parallax-view.org/review-my-bodyguard/): [Originally published in slightly different form in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] The critical adulation that greeted last year’s Breaking Away was symptomatic, in retrospect, not so much of a need to return to intelligent “little” films as of an acclimatization to the smallness, safety, and literary limitations of the TV movie. Breaking Away’s strong
- [Review: The Hunter](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-hunter/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] It’s a neat idea for Steve McQueen, who started his career playing a bounty hunter on TV, to confront his own image by playing an aging contemporary bounty hunter in a sort of “Bullitt Grows Old” adventure film—especially when the actor himself is surrounded by rumors that
- [Review: Coal Miner's Daughter](https://parallax-view.org/review-coal-miners-daughter-2/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Coal Miner's Daughter is an American success story in the best biopic tradition, whose virtues lie in John Corso's superb production design and in several strong performances that gently mix humor and romance with the darker side of human relations. The title of the film pays lip
- [Review: Carny](https://parallax-view.org/review-carny/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Three people warned me off Carny before I went to see it. I went anyway, partly to see Gary Busey and partly because I had a feeling about it. I can’t articulate that feeling any more now that I’ve seen the film than I could before I
- [Review: Bronco Billy](https://parallax-view.org/review-bronco-billy/): [Originally published in slightly different form in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] For his summer 1980 film, Clint Eastwood has chosen a sentimental, often corny script that layers screwball comedy conventions over the meanderings of a band of misfits who make a lifestyle, if not a living, out of being what they want rather than
- [Review: The Island](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-island/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] By heroic effort—and a curious failure to look very closely at the knife-holding hand breaking out of the Peter Benchley sea in the ad art—I managed not to know the dread secret of a certain sector of the Caribbean where small boats and their passengers and crews
- [Review: Friday the 13th / Prom Night](https://parallax-view.org/review-friday-the-13th-prom-night/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] You don't review movies like these, you step on them. One could probably trace the existence of several dozen Halloween ripoffs jockeying for a starting spot sometime during the 1980 drive-in season—some of them aiming not only to be take-the-money-and-run successes at the box office, but also
- [Review: ffOLKES](https://parallax-view.org/review-ffolkes/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Eccentric heroes, and movies featuring eccentric heroes, must have the courage of that eccentricity in order to persuade audiences to accept and honor it. Roger Excalibur ffolkes is nothing if not an eccentric -- so why do the wetsuits on his underwater demolition team read FFOLKES FFUSILIERS
- [Review: Fame](https://parallax-view.org/review-fame/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Whether Fame will tally up as a hit of this flabby movie summer is not clear at this moment, but the film is having some kind of success. In Seattle the picture opened soft and swiftly built, through word-of-mouth, to better-than-average b.o. Moreover, a portion of every
- [Review: The Blue Lagoon](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-blue-lagoon/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] I've never read Henry De Vere Stacpoole's 1903 novel and I must have passed up the 1948 British film version, with Jean Simmons and Donald Houston in the featured roles, 20 times on television; for that matter, until Showtime delivers me from this specific ignorance within the
- [Review: L'Amour viole](https://parallax-view.org/review-lamour-viole/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] The Seattle exhibitor that gave a one-week run to Yannick Bellon's film about a rape victim and the emotional and sociopolitical aftermath of the crime advertised the picture under its French title, L'Amour violé, admirably seeking to avoid the sensationalistic come-on of the U.S. distributor's banner translation,
- [Grizzly Man: The Overwhelming Indifference Of Nature](https://parallax-view.org/grizzly-man-the-overwhelming-indifference-of-nature/): It's easy to see why Werner Herzog was so fascinated by Timothy Treadwell, the former beach bum turned self-made wildlife activist and grizzly bear guardian who spent thirteen summers living amidst the grizzly bears of the Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska until he, along with his girlfriend and traveling partner, Amie Huguenard, was
- [Review: Used Cars](https://parallax-view.org/review-used-cars/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Is there a cure for Southern California? Oh, I don't mean the smog, the materialism, "the City of the One-Night Stands," any of that stuff—don't bother me none. What's getting to bother me in a big way is the barrenness of cinematic output from those children of
- [Review: Tom Horn](https://parallax-view.org/review-tom-horn/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] There are so many bad signs on Tom Horn going in, and so many holes to overleap while watching it, the marvel is that it lingers in the mind as a rather ingratiating picture. Right away one distrusts a movie with a director-for-hire from TV and a
- ["And then I just go ahead and write that dialogue" - John Sayles [Part 2]](https://parallax-view.org/and-then-i-just-go-ahead-and-write-that-dialogue-john-sayles-part-2/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Continued from "Part 1" here. Your characters in Secaucus 7 are very natural; it's as though you knew them like friends. I'd like to know how you developed your characters, how you chose them, and how you made them come alive. I don't really remember writing the
- ["And then I just go ahead and write that dialogue" - John Sayles [Part 1]](https://parallax-view.org/and-then-i-just-go-ahead-and-write-that-dialogue-john-sayles-part-1/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Introduction by Richard T. Jameson When it comes to new hope for the American cinema, filmcrit types are always in the market. New hope in 1980 took the form of a low-budget festival film with the misunderstandable title Return of the Secaucus 7. It wasn't a documentary,
- ["I don't like those hard goodbyes" - Strother Martin](https://parallax-view.org/i-dont-like-those-hard-goodbyes-strother-martin/): [Originally published in Movietone News 66-67, March 1981] Introduction by Richard T. Jameson Strother Martin thought the folks from the Seattle Film Society wanted to meet him just because he had done some jobs of work for Sam Peckinpah and they had had Sam to tea a year or so earlier. Not that that gave
- [Aguirre, The Wrath Of God: Extraordinary Images, Extraordinary Resonance](https://parallax-view.org/aguirre-the-wrath-of-god-extraordinary-images-extraordinary-resonance/): By Ken Eisler [Originally published in Movietone News 29, January-February 1971, reprinted in Movietone News 62-63, December 1979] We were looking at a back number of the magazine for quite another reason and happened on this piece by the late Ken Eisler. It was written at a time when most of us had heard little
- [Offing the Pig: Even Dwarfs Started Small](https://parallax-view.org/offing-the-pig-even-dwarfs-started-small/): By Ken Eisler [Originally published in Movietone News 36, October 1974] It's easy to see how Werner Herzog's third feature might have provoked cries of "Reaction!" from students and other militants. The film's rebellion of dwarfs against a callous but mealy-mouthed reform school administration certainly "starts small"; it barely gets one cubit off the ground,
- [Losing Focus: Three Herzog Shorts - The Dark Glow of the Mountains, The Ballad of the Little Soldier, Little Dieter Needs to Fly](https://parallax-view.org/losing-focus-three-herzog-shorts-the-dark-glow-of-the-mountains-the-ballad-of-the-little-soldier-little-dieter-needs-to-fly/): The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1984), suffers from limitations imposed by its subject: the effort of two daredevil climbers to scale two difficult mountains back-to-back, without a break in between. They describe this as something never done before and much more dangerous than climbing one peak. The aesthetic problem, though, is that the available
- [On Staring Into the Camera: Aguirre and Bears](https://parallax-view.org/on-staring-into-the-camera-aguirre-and-bears/): (This piece was presented as lecture to a general audience at the Seattle Art Museum following a screening of Aguirre, the Wrath of God. I left it as is, so it might feel more spoken than written, which was the original idea.) Near the end of Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog's amazing documentary about a man
- [Signs of Life: Longing for a Rational, Ordered World](https://parallax-view.org/signs-of-life-longing-for-a-rational-ordered-world/): Although Signs of life (1967) was Herzog's first feature film, it has few of the self-conscious, look-at-me-making-a-movie film school tricks that often characterize first efforts. Compared to the director's later work, it seems muted, but it contains many of its director's signature motifs and devices: strikingly bizarre, expressive images; off-beat, occasionally off-the-wall humor rooted in
- [Land of Silence and Darkness: What it Means to be Human](https://parallax-view.org/land-of-silence-and-darkness-what-it-means-to-be-human/): Land of Silence and Darkness(1971) was Herzog's first feature-length documentary (his previous feature, Fata Morgana [1971] begs to be classed as a metaphysical documentary, but by Herzog's daffy description, is sci-fi). The subject matter, the struggle for human communication, is such a natural for Herzog that in some ways the film is quintessential early Herzog.
- [Heart of Glass](https://parallax-view.org/heart-of-glass/): Werner Herzog seemed to court risks, artistic and personal. Heart of Glass (1976), may be his most ambitious, stylized, and explicitly allegorical film, and seems in retrospect to mark the point where his relentless risk-taking overreached his limits. Heart of Glass in conventional terms is a failure, ponderous, stilted, overwhelmingly pretentious, but one that still
- [Stroszek](https://parallax-view.org/stroszek/): Even when he made Stroszek (1978), Herzog's work had reflected parallel interests in documentary and narrative fiction forms. The sublime Fata Morgana (1971) (despite Herzog's preposterous claim that it is a sci-fi film about an intergalactic war) and the wonderfully perverse Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970), almost as much as the explicitly documentary Land of
- [Even Dwarfs Started Small: Persistence and Futility](https://parallax-view.org/even-dwarfs-started-small-persistence-and-futility/): Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) stands out as one of his most singular films. It has virtually no story-line ("dwarfs raise hell" probably exhausts the subject) and its harsh tone seems to confront its audience, aggressively demanding some kind of response. Even the title seems a kind of challenge: why the word "even," which
- [Rescue Dawn: The Challenge of the Extraordinary](https://parallax-view.org/rescue-dawn-the-challenge-of-the-extraordinary/): When I first saw Rescue Dawn—in fact, when I saw the preview trailer—I said to myself, Aha! After a whole generation, here's another green film from Werner Herzog. Herzog has made a lot of remarkable films. But so long is the reach of Aguirre, Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, and so profound their visual stamp,
- [Fitzcarraldo: The Idea Was a Bold One](https://parallax-view.org/fitzcarraldo-the-idea-was-a-bold-one/): [Originally published in The Informer, January 1983] "The project fell through, but the idea was a bold one." The story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald's life—perhaps his epitaph—is writ large very near the beginning of Fitzcarraldo, by his own loving Molly. Fitzcarraldo is in a recursive nightmare: To bring opera to Iquitos, he must have money;
- [When Herr R[ainer] Ran Amok](https://parallax-view.org/when-herr-rainer-ran-amok/): Whether or not Rainer Fassbinder was the most talented of the wave of West German directors who emerged during the 1970s, he was certainly the most prolific, protean and elusive. His first feature, Love is Colder than Death was released in 1969. Incredibly, the films discussed below, Fox and His Friends (1974) and Mother Kusters
- [Honda's Sci-Fi, Cassavetes' Husbands, Tati at Play - DVDs for the Week](https://parallax-view.org/cassavetes-husbands-honda-sci-fi-tati-playtime-dvds-for-the-week/): Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection Though his name is conspicuously absent from the cover, the Icon of Sci-Fi celebrated in Sony's three-disc set is Ishiro Honda, the prolific director of the original Godzilla and a legendary run of giant monster movies. This collection from Sony highlights his science fiction output with the stateside DVD debuts
- [Nikkatsu Noir - DVDs for the Week](https://parallax-view.org/nikkatsu-noir-dvd-for-the-week/): Nikkatsu Noir Nikkatsu, Japan's oldest film studio, was the home of Japan's wildest crime dramas and gangster thrillers of the sixties. Whether or not the five Japanese gangster films in the Nikkatsu Noir box set from Eclipse are true noirs is debatable, but they are lively B-movie artifacts from the wild and weird era of
- [Happy Anniversary, Parallax View!](https://parallax-view.org/happy-anniversary-parallax-view/): Parallax View turns 1! This film magazine/blog, a collaboration of a small group of Seattle-based film critics, went live on August 14, 2008. To celebrate our first anniversary, we pay tribute to the film that inspired the name with archival pieces by our contributors. The Pakula Parallax by Richard T. Jameson 13 Ways of Looking
- [Last Year at Graceland](https://parallax-view.org/last-year-at-graceland/): Last Year at Graceland: The Story Behind Elvis Presley's Lost Film Actual listing from the Turner Classic Movies website, August 16, 2002: “3:00 PM – TICKLE ME/1965 A wealthy man tries to convince a bored socialite that they had an affair years earlier. Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoeff. D: Alain Resnais. C-91m.” In the
- [13 Ways of Looking at The Parallax View](https://parallax-view.org/13-ways-of-looking-at-the-parallax-view/): [Originally published in Movietone News 34, August 1974] 1. The Parallax View is an interesting suspense thriller with a thin plot involving a newspaper reporter named Frady (Warren Beatty) and his independent investigation of an employment bureau for assassins. 2. The Parallax View is Alan Pakula's hommage to Alfred Hitchcock, employing many of the Master's
- [The Parallax View: An Introduction](https://parallax-view.org/the-parallax-view-an-introduction/): [Originally published on the Turner Classic Movies website on March 2009.] Alan Pakula's The Parallax View, a political thriller with an unmistakable resemblance to the Kennedy assassination, was not the first conspiracy thriller to emerge from Hollywood – you can trace the lineage back to The Manchurian Candidate in 1962 – and it was not
- [St. Nick in Seattle](https://parallax-view.org/st-nick-in-seattle/): David Patrick Lowery's new film—and first feature—St. Nick was showcased at the shorts film festival Rawstock 5 at the end of July. Having liked all of Lowery's earlier work that I had seen, I didn't want to miss it, or the rare chance to meet the film maker in person. My anticipation was not misplaced.
- [The Pakula Parallax](https://parallax-view.org/the-pakula-parallax/): [originally published in Film Comment Vol. 12 No. 5, September/October 1976] There is no more classical filmmaker than Alan J. Pakula at work in the American cinema today—a description that applies at several levels. Among contemporary directorial hotshots he is a comparative veteran, having been employed in one capacity or another in the studio system
- [Interview: Lynn Shelton on 'Humpday'](https://parallax-view.org/interview-lynn-shelton-on-humpday/): Humpday, the third feature from local filmmaker Lynn Shelton, made its world premiere in the Dramatic Competition section of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. It was the first film sale of the festival and went on to win a Special Jury Prize "For the Spirit of Independence." It subsequently played in the exclusive Directors' Fortnight
- [Silents Please! The San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2009 (Part 1)](https://parallax-view.org/silents-please-the-san-francisco-silent-film-festival-2009-part-1/): I've traveled to Pordenone, Italy, three times to attend Le Giornate de Cinema Muto, the biggest, grandest, most dedicated silent film festival in the world: eight days of morning to midnight screenings of the masterpieces, rarities, rediscoveries and revelations. Yet in my own backyard (more or less) I'd never been to the San Francisco Silent
- [Silents Please! The San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2009 (Part 2)](https://parallax-view.org/silents-please-the-san-francisco-silent-film-festival-2009-part-2/): Bardelys the Magnificent The most anticipated event at any silent film festival is the premiere of a "lost" film, rediscovered and restored. Bardelys the Magnificent, the 1926 swashbuckler starring John Gilbert and directed by King Vidor, was long thought lost for good but for a brief glimpse in Vidor's Show People. Then a single surviving
- [Army of Shadows and the Unforgiving Code of Jean-Pierre Melville](https://parallax-view.org/army-of-shadows-and-the-unforgiving-code-of-jean-pierre-melville/): [Originally published in slightly different form on GreenCine in 2006, in conjunction with the American theatrical release of Army of Shadows.] Jean-Pierre Melville is surely the ultimate cult auteur in the French cinema. Spiritual godfather of the French New Wave (Jean-Luc Godard paid tribute to Melville with a generous cameo in his debut feature Breathless),
- [Hitchcock's Topaz Revisited](https://parallax-view.org/hitchcocks-topaz-revisited/): “It is time that we start. Will you be kind enough to follow me? What I'm going to show you will be mainly the traditional things. Up here let me show you details in the production, which we're rather proud of showing. As you see, flowers are made petal by petal, and this is an
- [Aguirre, The Wrath of God - Defying the Natural Order](https://parallax-view.org/aguirre-the-wrath-of-god-defying-the-natural-order/): Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972) was Werner Herzog's fifth feature film—his first with Klaus Kinski—and arguably his most compelling, resonant, and admired early work. Its opening titles announce its subject as an expedition led by Pizarro in search of El Dorado, that crossed the Andes descended to the jungle floor, and made an ill-fated
- [Claude Chabrol on DVD](https://parallax-view.org/claude-chabrol-on-dvd/): Consider this a post-script to Ten Days' Wonder: The Claude Chabrol Blogathon: your guide to revisiting Chabrol on DVD (U.S. DVD releases only). More than half of Chabrol's over 50 features have been released to DVD stateside, thanks in large part to such labels as Kino, Kimstim, Pathfinder and First Run, with other labels filling
- [La Femme infidèle](https://parallax-view.org/la-femme-infidele/): [Originally written for the University of Washington Office of Lectures & Concerts Film Series, May 22, 1973] For some time it was easy to regard Claude Chabrol as far and away the least of the nouvelle vague Big Three. Whereas Truffaut gifted us with bittersweet, occasionally wry affirmations of an abounding, Renoiresque life force and
- [Claude Chabrol - The Classicist](https://parallax-view.org/claude-chabrol-the-classicist/): This piece was written about fifteen years ago for a cinema biographies project that never came to fruition. None of it appears to need changing, but by way of updating I've appended a comment on a recent Chabrol picture seen in the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. —RTJ, June 24, 2009  Claude Chabrol was
- [Jean Renoir's River](https://parallax-view.org/jean-renoir-the-river/): Jean Renoir's world-view, famously stated by a character the director played in The Rules of the Game (1939), is that “Everyone has his reasons.” Although Renoir recognized the corollary—that some reasons are better than others—he always understood the complex motivations that drive human actions. And that understanding, in turn, helped him to animate his characters—sympathetic
- [Winners Announced in 2004 Seattle Film Critics Awards](https://parallax-view.org/winners-announced-in-2004-seattle-film-critics-awards/): Press release Winners Announced in 2004 Seattle Film Critics Awards Forget about a recount! There will be no manual tally, no divining of intent, no lost ballots "discovered" behind the polling booth. The Seattle Film Critics have determined in no uncertain terms (okay, there is one tie) their choices for the best films of 2004.
- [Winners Announced in Second Annual Seattle Film Critics Awards](https://parallax-view.org/winners-announced-in-second-annual-seattle-film-critics-awards/): Press release Winners Announced in Second Annual Seattle Film Critics Awards December 18, 2003 Jack Valenti be damned! The second annual Seattle Film Critics Awards are here, despite Hollywood's notorious ban on screeners. Fourteen of the most prominent print critics from the Puget Sound area have voted on the best in the film year, perhaps
- [Interview - David Carradine](https://parallax-view.org/interview-david-carradine/): David Carradine died Wednesday in Bangkok at the age of 72. I had the pleasure of interviewing him in 2004, while he was promoting Kill Bill Vol. 2. This interview was originally published on GreenCine in April 2004. The son of John Carradine and elder half-brother to Keith and Robert, David’s career began in the
- [The Seventh Seal - DVD (and Blu-ray) of the Week](https://parallax-view.org/the-seventh-seal-dvd-and-blu-ray-for-week/): Arguably the most famous of Ingmar Bergman's films and certainly his most iconic, The Seventh Seal is Bergman at his most allegorical. Max von Sydow, young and blond and heroic, is a disillusioned knight returned from the Crusades in a state of spiritual desperation: his faith has been shaken by senseless death and terrible cruelty
- [Oh, the Humanity! Post-Apocalyptic Drear in "Terminator Salvation"](https://parallax-view.org/oh-the-humanity-post-apocalyptic-drear-in-terminator-salvation/): If movies indeed tap into the zeitgeist, Terminator Salvation, director McG's grim reboot of the 25-year-old man vs. machine franchise, speaks to a demographic in awfully low spirits. Will this relentless, episodic slog through post-apocalyptic drear, punched up by paroxysms of extreme violence, deliver at the box office and resurrect the Terminator series (sequels are
- [Water World - Beyond Rangoon](https://parallax-view.org/water-world-beyond-rangoon/): [originally published in Film Comment Vol. 31 No. 4, July/August 1995] The world is full of women who hunger for movies that unreel not Gawain's but Guinevere's gutsy quest to repair her own - and thus others' - ”broken souls and psyches. The Round Table of peerless travelin' ladies includes Bringing Up Baby's Katharine Hepburn,
- [John Ford's Wilderness: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance](https://parallax-view.org/john-fords-wilderness-the-man-who-shot-liberty-valance/): [originally published in slightly different form in Sight and Sound, Autumn 1978, Volume 47 No. 4; reprinted with thanks to BFI] The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance has been so widely discussed, dissected and applauded that by now it must rank as one of John Ford's least underappreciated films. Its reputation is due in no
- [SIFF 2009 - Summer Hours, Still Walking, The Hurt Locker](https://parallax-view.org/siff-2009-summer-hours-still-walking-the-hurt-locker/): The complications and tricky negotiations of family, as siblings grow up and leave to establish their own lives and their own families, was a central theme of numerous films at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. Two of the best films from that festival, Olivier Assayas' Summer Hours (L'heure d'ete) and Hirozaku Kore-Eda's Still Walking,
- [Interview - David Russo and Little Dizzle](https://parallax-view.org/interview-david-russo-and-little-dizzle/): I originally met David Russo years ago, after his short film Pan With Us had won an Honorable Mention at the Sundance Film Festival. He was a friend of a friend and had joined us for a night out, where somehow David and I wound up arguing over art and critics. His position was the
- [M Butterfly and The Sky Crawlers - DVDs for the Week](https://parallax-view.org/m-butterfly-dvds-for-the-week/): M Butterfly (Warner) Warner Home Video releases a quartet of DVD debuts, all with troubled critical histories: loved by some, disliked by many, largely ignored by most. And that's what makes their arrivals so interesting: it gives us a chance, an excuse even, to revisit the films. That said, I'm up to my eyeballs in
- [John Huston: Withholding Judgment](https://parallax-view.org/john-huston-withholding-judgment/): [Parts of the article previously appeared in Cinemonkey and as program notes for Cinema 7] Film critics have never quite known what to make of John Huston; whether his work has been praised or disparaged, it has almost always inspired critical overkill. After a striking debut with The Maltese Falcon (1941) and a pair of
- [Of Time and the City and Alexander Korda - DVDs for the week](https://parallax-view.org/of-time-and-the-city-and-alexander-korda-dvds-for-the-week/): Of Time and the City (Strand) If Liverpool did not exist, it would have to be invented. And in some ways, that's what Terence Davies does in his cinematic essay, a personal remembrance of a city that he recalls from his ambivalent perspective of troubled affection and critical commentary. Freely mixing history and remembrance, documentary
- [Jo Shishido and the Red Cherry Blossom Wanderer - DVDs for the Week](https://parallax-view.org/jo-shishido-and-the-red-cherry-blossom-wanderer-dvds-for-the-week/): Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards! (Kino) It may not be the best film of the week but this early Seijun Suzuki yakuza potboiler certainly sports the greatest title I've seen flash across my flatscreen all year: Detective Bureau 2-3: Go To Hell Bastards! The film, starring a cocky and cool Jo Shishido as
- [Star Trek - Not So Boldly Going](https://parallax-view.org/star-trek-not-so-boldly-going/): The upcoming statement isn’t exactly going to set the internet on fire, but here goes: I’ve got a bit of a beef with Harlan Ellison, namely for his oft-crowed, dependably nerd-enraging assertion that the OG Star Trek series was nothing more than a “cop show in space.” Although said statement does serve to nicely deflate
- [Interview: Patrice Leconte - "Life is already too serious"](https://parallax-view.org/patrice-leconte-life-is-already-too-serious/): French auteur Patrice Leconte made his international reputation with the chilly yet emotionally intense Monsieur Hire (which gave French comic Michel Blanc his first dramatic role) and his subsequent string of rapturous, often tragic romantic dramas (The Hairdresser’s Husband and The Widow Of St. Pierre), tales of friendship (The Man On The Train), and the
- [Wendy and Lucy and Enchanted April - DVDs for the Week](https://parallax-view.org/wendy-and-lucy-and-enchanted-april-dvds-for-the-week/): Wendy and Lucy (Oscilloscope) Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy, a road movie that captured both the possibility and freedom of the weekend road trip and the tensions of anxieties of old friends who reunite only to find they have nothing in common anymore (not to mention the distinct shades and textures of Oregon's backroads), was one
- [Nagisa Oshima and In the Realm of the Senses](https://parallax-view.org/nagisa-oshima-and-in-the-realm-of-the-senses/): [originally published in a slightly different form in the Oregon Daily Emerald in 1977] Nagisha Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses (1977) was a cause célèbre even before it officially opened in the United States, thanks to a bizarre Customs Office decision to confiscate a print rather than allow the film to be screened
- [Ramin Bahrani's Chop Shop: "It's Alive!"](https://parallax-view.org/ramin-bahranis-chop-shop-its-alive/): [ed. note: Director Ramin Bahrani arrives in Seattle to conduct a "Master Class" workshop for Northwest Film Forum on Tuesday, April 28. On Wednesday, April 29, Bahrani will introduce a special screening of his new film, Goodbye Solo, with a Q&A to follow, also at NWFF. To mark the occasion, Jim Emerson has allowed us
- [Deadly Sweet, She Beast, Jean-Claude and Captain Kirk - DVDs for the Week](https://parallax-view.org/deadly-sweet-she-beast-jean-claude-and-captain-kirk-dvds-for-the-week/): Deadly Sweet (Cult Epics) Shot in England by an Italian director with a French leading man and a Swedish sex-doll leading lady (both dubbed into Italian), Deadly Sweet is advertised as a giallo (an Italian horror with cruel and flamboyant murders) but is really a vague murder mystery romp directed as a pop-art object. Jean-Louis
- [24 City - The Children of Mao and Microsoft](https://parallax-view.org/24-city-the-children-of-mao-and-microsoft/): Jia Zhiang-ke’s style, temperament, and circumstances uniquely suit him to chronicle his subject: turn-of-the-century China. His early films focused on youth, dislocated between the reality of, the backwater areas where they live, and the beckoning promise of an urbanized “modernity” of their dreams. More recently, he set The World among young workers in an urban
- [Interview: JT Petty, The Burrowers and the "alien territory" of the horror western](https://parallax-view.org/jt-petty-the-burrowers-and-the-alien-territory-of-the-horror-western/): JT Petty's third feature The Burrowers is another of his distinctively unusual takes on a generally conventional genre. Set in the Dakota Territory of 1879, where survival is already a challenge, Petty brings a starkly unglamorized sensibility to life and mortality on the Dakota prairie: it opens with a boy come a courting to a
- [The Wrestler and Nickelodeon on DVD, The Wages of Fear on Blu-ray - DVDs for the week](https://parallax-view.org/the-wrestler-nickelodeon-wages-of-fear/): The Wrestler (Fox) "Warm" and "human" are not two words you associate with Darren Aronofsky, but in The Wrestler he is both, thanks in large part to the heartbreakingly open and vulnerable performance from Mickey Rourke, the comeback story of 2008. It's been a long time coming for Rourke, who has been doing tremendous, unshowy
- [Off the Beach: Fellini Satyricon](https://parallax-view.org/off-the-beach-fellini-satyricon/): Fellini has been widely perceived as a moralist, ruthlessly portraying the corruption he saw around him in the social, political, and cultural flounderings of postwar Italy. But to regard him as a sometimes appreciative but more often critical observer of his world is to see only half the puzzle—the less interesting half. For Fellini always
- [Pre-Code Paramount and Fleischer's Superman - DVDs for the Week](https://parallax-view.org/pre-code-paramount-and-fleischers-superman-dvds-for-the-week/): Pre-Code Hollywood Collection / Cleopatra: 75th Anniversary Edition Universal Home Video plunges into the sex, sin and bathtub gin of pre-code Hollywood films with their answer to the "Forbidden Hollywood" series from Warner. The Pre-Code Hollywood Collection is branded as part of the "Universal Backlot Series" but it actually collects six films Paramount Pictures (Universal
- [Reign of Terror and The Yankee Clipper - DVDs for the week](https://parallax-view.org/reign-of-terror-and-the-yankee-clipper-dvds-for-the-week/): Reign of Terror (aka The Black Book) Anthony Mann's Reign of Terror (1949) has my vote for the most unique film noir ever made. All the hallmarks of great film noir – scheming and backstabbing characters, hard-boiled dialogue, narrow urban streets and dark alleys wet with rain and crowded with disreputable figures, and of course
- [Keeping Score - Musique Noir: Investigating the Sound of Film Noir](https://parallax-view.org/keeping-score-musique-noir-investigating-the-sound-of-film-noir/): The sound of noir—plaintive sax solos, blue cocktail piano, the wail of a distant trumpet through dark, wet alleyways, hot Latin beats oozing like a neon glow from the half-shuttered windows of forbidden nightspots. You walk the sidewalks of big, lonely towns, with no destination in mind, following only the sounds, guided by them, wondering
- [Warner Archive Collection - New Access to Old Movies](https://parallax-view.org/warner-archive-collection-new-access-to-old-movies/): Warner's launch of the Warner Archive Collection, its new DVD on Demand site, was well covered earlier this week (see The New York Times' The Carpetbagger, Susan King at the LA Times and Lou Leminick at the New York Post) but there's been little follow-up in the days since. Maybe that's because we're all waiting
- [Silent Light - Mortals and Miracles](https://parallax-view.org/silent-light-mortals-and-miracles/): The screen opens on the night sky, the stars glowing (not twinkling, mind you, but crisp and sharp and dense as seen from the clarity of a desert, with no city lights or urban pollution to muddy the view). The sounds of night are the only soundtrack, hyper-attentive to the natural world of insects. The
- [Shimizu in Japan – DVDs for the Week (Pt 1)](https://parallax-view.org/shimizu-in-japan-dvds-for-the-week/): Two box sets reveal the riches of two classic filmmakers with radically different pedigrees. F.W. Murnau has long been considered one of the great directors of world cinema and Kino's new Murnau: A Six DVD Box Set introduces two rarities in beautifully restored editions and an astounding restoration of Faust. (The review follows later this
- [Murnau in Germany - DVDs for the Week (Pt 2)](https://parallax-view.org/murnau-in-germany-dvds-for-the-week/): DVD has been as good to F.W. Murnau as any silent legend has a right to expect. Milestone Films released a gorgeous edition of his final film, Tabu, back in the early days of DVD. Flicker Alley released the 1922 rarity Phantom (restored by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation) a few years ago. Fox collected
- [William Wellman's Forbidden Hollywood - DVDs for the Week](https://parallax-view.org/william-wellmans-forbidden-hollywood-dvds-for-the-week/): The studios are finally listening to me! Okay, maybe not, but fifteen months ago I did publish my wish list of Dream DVD Special Editions and Box Sets on GreenCine. Some of those wishes have since come true: Touch of Evil: 50th Anniversary Edition (with all three cuts of the film), The Films of Budd
- ["The Robe" introduced a new Scope](https://parallax-view.org/the-robe-introduced-a-new-scope/): Whatever you think of the biblical blockbuster, The Robe, there’s no question that its phenomenal popularity marked a turning point in movie history. Twentieth Century-Fox, which previously treated it rather shabbily on DVD, tape and laser disc, is finally recognizing its significance with a Blu-ray Special Edition that’s loaded with extra features. Among them: a
- ["Let the Right One In," "Ben X" and "A Secret" - DVDs for the Week](https://parallax-view.org/let-the-right-one-in-ben-x-and-a-secret-dvds-for-the-week/): March 10 is an unaccountably busy week for new films on DVD. Gus Van Sant's Oscar-winning Milk (for Best Actor Sean Penn and for Best Original Screenplay), Jonathan Demme's marvelous ensemble drama Rachel Getting Married (which earned an Oscar nomination for Anne Hathaway) and Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky (Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay, but Sally
- [Playing Fair with Mel Gibson's "Passion"](https://parallax-view.org/playing-fair-with-mel-gibson-passion/): [Originally written for Queen Anne News, 2004] In the week since I attended a press screening of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, I've talked and argued about religion, with believers and unbelievers alike, more than I have in decades. Every film reviewer, pundit and talkshow host in the country has fervently weighed in
- [The Night of the Hunter](https://parallax-view.org/the-night-of-the-hunter/): [originally published on Robert Horton's blog The Crop Duster on March 1, 2009] “I'll be back,” the man calls out, “when it's dark.” Those words are the warning, and the credo, of every monster that ever slouched through fairy tale or film. Toward the end of The Night of the Hunter, they are uttered by
- [Learning to Do It Right: "The Wild Bunch" - A Personal Reflection](https://parallax-view.org/learning-to-do-it-right-the-wild-bunch-a-personal-reflection/): Law and order and grace and understanding are things that have to be taught. … People are born to survive. They have instincts that go back millions of years. Unfortunately, some of those instincts are based on violence. There is a great streak of violence in every human being. If it is not channeled and
- ["I try to get the essence of things" - An Interview with Horton Foote](https://parallax-view.org/i-try-to-get-the-essence-of-things-an-interview-with-horton-foote/): [Editor's note - This interview appeared in a very different form in the November/December 1996 issue of Modern Maturity. The introduction was written specifically for this publication.] Horton Foote died March 5th, 2009, at his daughter Hallie's home in Connecticut where he was at work cutting his 'Orphan's Home Cycle' from 9 plays into a
- [This is Not a Watchman Review](https://parallax-view.org/this-is-not-a-watchman-review/): [published in conjunction with the blog seanax.com] The world doesn't need another Watchmen review. Everyone with access to a preview screening and a web page has already done one. The world is not short of opinions and the web doesn't seem to differentiate between considered responses and emotional reflex put to words, though you can
- [Bob, Bing, and the Case of the Traveling Matte](https://parallax-view.org/bob-bing-and-the-case-of-the-traveling-matte/): POP QUIZ: In which Powell & Pressburger classic did Bob Hope and Bing Crosby make a cameo appearance? ANSWER: They didn’t, but The Road to Hong Kong led them (sort of) to the setting of Black Narcissus. Allow me to explain. One of the great pleasures of watching older movies is that you can frequently spot
- [New Yorker Essentials - DVDs for the Week](https://parallax-view.org/new-yorker-essentials-on-dvd/): As the shock of New Yorker's announcement sinks in, so does the complicated legacy of New Yorker. In conversations with friends and colleagues who programmed college campus films series and commercial repertory calendars (back when such things were a vital part of a metropolitan city cinema landscape), we all recalled the high prices of New
- ["Hobson's Choice" - DVD for the Week 2/17/09](https://parallax-view.org/hobsons-choice-dvd-for-the-week-21709/): My affection for the cinema of David Lean is decidedly equivocal. He practically defines the British "Tradition of Quality" strain of filmmaking that favors taste and literary pedigree over personal sensibility and stylistic adventure. You'll never find the fierce authorial intelligence or cinematic thrill of Alfred Hitchcock, or the fearlessly romantic imagery or wild heartiness
- [DVD for the Week - Remembering New Yorker Films 1965-2009](https://parallax-view.org/dvd-for-the-week-remembering-new-yorker-films-1965-2009/): I got the news from Girish Shambu (via Facebook), who directed me to a report on IndieWire by Eugene Hernandez, who confirmed it: New Yorker Films is closing its doors. The devastating news is on the New Yorker homepage. Anyone who was active in film culture in the days before the video business gave us
- [Pagnol's Marseilles Trilogy and its Screen Incarnations](https://parallax-view.org/pagnols-marseilles-trilogy-and-its-screen-incarnations/): Whenever I'm asked to name my favorite tearjerker, I answer Marcel Pagnol's Marseilles Trilogy – and its mostly faithful offspring. In all of its screen incarnations, it's an epic tale of thwarted romance that unfolds over a period of several years. If the original six-hour French-language trilogy—Marius (1931), Fanny (1932) and Cesar (1936)—sounds unfamiliar, you
- [Under the Radar: Brian Cox in "Red" (2008)](https://parallax-view.org/under-the-radar-1-brian-cox-in-red-2008/): This is the first entry in an ongoing series by Parallax View contributor Jeff Shannon, written in appreciation of lesser-known films, performances, film-related achievements or other newsworthy items that haven't received the attention they deserve. Don’t get me wrong: Red is a not great movie, or even a very good one. But if you’re looking for a minor
- ["Chocolate" - DVD for the Week 2/10/09](https://parallax-view.org/chocolate-dvd-of-the-week-21009/): It may seem peevish to choose Prachya Pinkaew's Thai action film over a pair of Luis Bunuel masterpieces or a Clint Eastwood box set or even Eric Rohmer's latest delight. So be it. I concede that The Exterminating Angel is arguably the essential release of the week and that The Romance of Astrea and Celadon
- ["The Midnight Meat Train" - The Pitiless Order in Clive Barker's Horror Universe](https://parallax-view.org/the-midnight-meat-train-clive-barker/): [Published in conjunction with the blog seanax.com] The Midnight Meat Train. What a perfectly descriptive and accurate title. The name alone should have secured this Clive Barker adaptation a theatrical release. In a youth film culture that has embraced increasingly violent and sadistic horror films, especially those that linger on acts of inhuman brutality and
- [What Ever Happened to Arch Oboler? (Part Two - 3D)](https://parallax-view.org/what-ever-happened-to-arch-oboler-part-two/): [Part One of Matthew Rovner's overview of Arch Oboler's films career ran on Parallax View here. Part Two covers Oboler's efforts as a pioneer in 3D cinema.] SYMPATHY FOR BWANA DEVIL While in Kenya, Oboler became fascinated with The Man-Eaters of Tsavo (1907), written by adventurer and Zionist J.H. Patterson. The story was based on
- [What Ever Happened to Arch Oboler? (Part One)](https://parallax-view.org/whatever-happened-to-arch-obloler-part-one/): [Arch Oboler's Five makes its home video debut on Tuesday, February 3. To mark the occasion, Oboler expert Matthew Rovner has contributed a brief history his film career. Part One covers his earliest films. ] Arch Oboler came to Hollywood out of the radio tube, but he never showed the visual flair of Orson Welles.
- ["Gumshoe," "Five," "Our Man in Havana" and Martini Movies - DVDs for the Week 2/3/09](https://parallax-view.org/gumshoe-five-our-man-in-havana-and-martini-movies-dvds-of-the-week/): What exactly is a "Martini Movie"? Sony hasn't really explained the meaning behind the moniker it's used to brand a collection of otherwise unrelated films from the Columbia Pictures catalogue. But based on the promotional featurettes the Sony has whipped up for each of the now ten DVDs released that imprint, a "Martini Movie" is
- [Keeping Score - Scary Music: the Sequel](https://parallax-view.org/keeping-score-scary-music-the-sequel/): For last Halloween, I offered a list of 13 movie scores that I believe stand out as landmarks in the in the history of scary movie music. I got some comments from a few readers who were disappointed that some of their own favorite fright film scores and composers weren’t represented. Well, there’s a lot
- [Review: Gumshoe](https://parallax-view.org/gumshoe/): [originally published in Movietone News, May/June 1972] "SAM SPADE: Ginley's the Name—Gumshoe's the Game." After a year of psychoanalysis, brought on by his girlfriend's marrying his brother and terminated by his genial conclusion that the shrink is “off his head,” Eddie Ginley places the foregoing advert in a Liverpool paper. His breakfast-time reading is The
- [The last list of Lists for 2008 - The Year in Cinema](https://parallax-view.org/the-last-list-of-lists-for-2008-the-year-in-cinema/): The reading of the Oscar nominations marks the unofficial (and long overdue) end to the season of Top Ten lists and year-in-review pieces and various awards bestowed by every group who wants to add their stamp to the passports of Oscar hopefuls. So as a postscript, I gather a few lists and remarks from Parallax
- ["Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" - DVD for the Week 1/27/09](https://parallax-view.org/roman-polanski-wanted-and-desired-dvd-of-the-week-12709/): Is Marina Zenovich's documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired in fact the "DVD of the Week" this week? I mean, is it the standout film this week, or an overlooked masterpiece, or a superior use of the DVD medium? Or am I just reaching to fill the slot of a weekly feature? Some of the
- [Observations, Reflections, and Ruminations from 2008](https://parallax-view.org/observations-reflections-and-ruminations-from-2008/): No, this is not a top ten of the year, nor even a fair bid at a summation of the year in movies. It’s just a grab-bag of passing thoughts teased into being by some of the films I saw this past year, and an effort to say a few things that no one else
- [Douglas Sirk: An Introduction](https://parallax-view.org/douglas-sirk-an-introduction/): [Criterion releases Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession this week. In celebration, I offer this essay, which was originally published on GreenCine in 2007] Halfway through Written on the Wind (1956), after oil baron Robert Keith has been bluntly confronted by the tawdry affairs of his alcoholic daughter Dorothy Malone, the dialogue drops out and the driving
- ["Magnificent Obsession" - DVD of the Week 1/20/09](https://parallax-view.org/magnificent-obsession-dvd-of-the-week-12009/): Deep in the second act of Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession, as Jane Wyman's blind heroine Helen Hudson mourns for her lost sight after a disappointing prognosis from the world's greatest ocular specialists in a Swiss Clinic, she steps out of her bedroom and into the drawing room of her accommodations (no tourist class for this
- [Interview: Darren Aronofsky on "The Wrestler"](https://parallax-view.org/interview-darren-aronofsky-on-the-wrestler/): Darren Aronofky comes across as a very centered, easy-going, down-to-Earth guy. Not what you'd expect from the guy who directed Pi, Requiem For a Dream and The Fountain. Maybe not even The Wrestler, though his love of the story and the characters comes through when he talks about. I interviewed Darren Aronofsky in Seattle back
- [Keeping Score - "Ennio Morricone: The Complete Edition"](https://parallax-view.org/keeping-score-ennio-morricone-the-complete-edition/): Fifteen CDs is a big set—and a bargain for $99.95. But in what sense is GDM’s big holiday release a “Complete Edition”? Obviously it’s not everything the Maestro has written; that couldn’t be done in ten times as many discs. The avowed effort here is, for the first time in a single collection, to offer
- ["The Taking Of Power By Louis XIV" – DVD of the Week 1/13/09](https://parallax-view.org/the-taking-of-power-by-louis-xiv-dvd/): "I don't interpret. I don't transmit any message. I avoid expressing theories and forcing meanings. I reconstruct documents, I offer information which leaves to the spectator the entire responsibility for his own judgments." - Roberto Rossellini This week, Criterion resurrects key productions from Roberto Rossellini's cycle of historical films directed for television in the
- [Interview: Steven Soderbergh and "Che"](https://parallax-view.org/interview-steven-soderbergh-and-che/): Steven Soderbergh's Che is both two features and one work, a 4 ½-hour production that carves out what Soderbergh, producer/star Benicio Del Toro and screenwriter Peter Buchman see as the two defining periods in the life of Ernesto Che Guevara: the Cuban Revolution and the Bolivian expedition. Except for a brief scene where Guevara meets
- ["A Matter of Life and Death" (The Films of Michael Powell) - DVD of the Week 1/6/2009](https://parallax-view.org/a-matter-of-life-and-death-the-films-of-michael-powell-dvd/): I'm starting the new year with something old and something new. I've imported my "DVD of the Week" feature from my blog, www.seanax.com, and reworked it into a focus on a single release, with links to further reviews and resources. And we start the year with the first essential DVD release of 2009. Michael Powell
- [Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Up For Sale, Up in the Air](https://parallax-view.org/seattle-post-intelligencer-up-for-sale-up-in-the-air/): [Published in conjunction with the blog seanax.com] You could say it came as a complete surprise when, on Thursday evening, local TV station KING-TV announced that, according to unnamed sources, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer would be put up for sale. The P-I staff had no news of it and the Hearst Corporation, which owns the P-I,
- [Powell and Hitchcock](https://parallax-view.org/powell-and-hitchcock/): [This was written on May 15, 2001, for the Northwest Film Forum newsletter.] Michael Powell worked uncredited as a set designer and title writer on Alfred Hitchcock's 1929 movie Blackmail. Which is neither here nor there, but does serve to mark the accidental convergence of England's two most exciting directorial talents. I was dreaming about
- [The Essential DVD Debuts of 2008](https://parallax-view.org/the-essential-dvd-debuts-of-2008/): I've done the best DVD releases of the year in some incarnation or another for years. This one is a little different. This is not a celebration of the most impressive special editions, the most stunning transfers or the best supplements. This is my list of what I consider the essential movies that debut on
- ["Revolutionary Road" and "The Reader": On the Oscar Run](https://parallax-view.org/revolutionary-road-and-the-reader-on-the-oscar-run/): Tis the season. Oscar bait season, that is, when the studios line up the major releases jockeying for spots on Top Ten lists and critics groups awards on the way to the Oscar nominations in January. Unlike the superhero movies and fantasy blockbusters and comedy vehicles that are crammed into thousands of theaters in a
- [In Praise of "Doubt" in the Certainty of Cinema](https://parallax-view.org/in-praise-of-doubt-in-the-certainty-of-cinema/): With every review I read of Doubt, I get the nagging feeling that I've seen a different film. It's certain that I've had a different experience. Doubt, John Patrick Shanley's screen adaptation of his own play and the first film he has directed since Joe Versus the Volcano, continues to rumble through my mind because
- [Interview: Kevin Smith and Zack and Miri](https://parallax-view.org/kevin-smith-makes-a-porno-comedy/): When I first interviewed Kevin Smith a few years ago, during his press tour for Jersey Girl, I apparently caught him on a bad day. He was tired, distracted, stretched out on a hotel couch and chain smoking with an oblivious reflex. You don't really expect a connection when you interview a filmmaker or a
- [Will Eisner, Frank Miller and "The Spirit"](https://parallax-view.org/will-eisner-frank-miller-and-the-spirit/): "… I piped up with my own theories about the relationship between comic books and movies. Without realizing it, I'd essentially characterized comics as the poor man's film, thinking each panel the equivalent of a frozen frame of celluloid. Will [Eisner] ripped me to pieces…. What counts, he told me, is panel content, the function
- [Pilgrims' Progress: On the Road with Frank Borzage's Earth Angels](https://parallax-view.org/pilgrims-progress-on-the-road-with-frank-borzages-earth-angels/): [This essay was originally published in an issue of Steadycam magazine devoted to the cinema of Frank Borzage.] Quentin Tarantino once warned a movie palace full of his fans not to "sophisticate yourselves out of feeling." It's a good credo to bear in mind while watching movies by Frank Borzage. When I recently plunged into
- [Budd Boetticher: A Career](https://parallax-view.org/budd-boetticher-a-career/): “They can lick you (which they can't) or they can fire you, and once you know that you're not afraid of anybody.” - Budd Boetticher on producers, 1988 interview Budd Boetticher stumbled into the movies in the fluky way so many of the two-fisted directors of the silent days landed in the director's chair, but
- [Burt Kennedy: Writing Broadway in Arizona](https://parallax-view.org/burt-kennedy-writing-broadway-in-arizona/): Burt Kennedy has a long resume as a director, with such credits to his name as The Rounders, Welcome to Hard Times and Support Your Local Gunfighter. But he started his film career as a screenwriter under contract to John Wayne and made his reputation with four brilliant westerns that Budd Boetticher directed and Randolph
- [Budd Boetticher: A DVD Wish List](https://parallax-view.org/budd-boetticher-a-dvd-wish-list/): The release of The Films of Budd Boetticher finally brings five essential films by the director to DVD. Along with Paramount's release of Seven Men From Now a few years ago, his career-defining "Ranown Cycle," the six westerns starring Randolph Scott that made Boetticher's reputation, is now available on home video. It's a triumph, but
- [Budd Boetticher and the Ranown Cycle: "What a director is supposed to do"](https://parallax-view.org/budd-boetticher-and-the-ranown-films/): My first contact with Budd Boetticher was in 1987. I was a graduate student in film studies at the University of Oregon and I thought I was getting his agent's phone number from the DGA. I found out very quickly that it was his home number when he answered personally. He was an affable man
- ["Seven Men from Now" - A Cinema Masterpiece](https://parallax-view.org/seven-men-from-now/): The following essay, adapted from a review published in Queen Anne News (Seattle), appears in the new anthology from the National Society of Film Critics, The B List, edited by David Sterritt and John Anderson (Da Capo Press). The making of Seven Men from Now was a modest enterprise. John Wayne's old Batjac production company
- [George Romero Surveys the Dead](https://parallax-view.org/george-romero-roams-the-land-of-the-dead/): [I conducted this phone interview with George Romero on October 5, 2005, in anticipation of the DVD release of Land of the Dead. It was originally published on GreenCine on October 18, 2005.] 36 years after shocking audiences with the unprecedented Night of the Living Dead and changing the face of American horror for good, and 20
- ["Videodrome" - Long Live the New Flesh](https://parallax-view.org/videodrome-long-live-the-new-flesh/): Just a few years into the 21st century, Olivier Assayas wrote in The Village Voice: “Cronenberg's visionary Videodrome is the most important film of this generation. Time has only reinforced its audacity.” It's been 25 years since David Cronenberg's first masterpiece drilled its mutant images into the minds of unsuspecting audiences, and Videodrome is as
- [Budd Boetticher: An Introduction](https://parallax-view.org/budd-boetticher-an-introduction/): When Oscar "Budd" Boetticher, the last of the old Hollywood two-fisted directors, died on November 27, 2001, his passing was barely noted. This old-fashioned studio pro with an independent streak, a colorful history (including a turn as a bullfighter in Mexico), and a career of some 35 features, had been largely forgotten by all but
- [There Will Be Choice: Why Gone Baby Gone Is the Best Film of 2007](https://parallax-view.org/there-will-be-choice-why-gone-baby-gone-is-the-best-film-of-2007/): [Editor's Note: The House Next Door is currently reissuing a series of articles developed at 24LiesASecond, a now-defunct platform for provocative criticism with an underdog bite. Author Robert Cumbow is a member of the Parallax View collective and his essays are being published simultaneously on Parallax View. The essay below was first published on 11/05/2008,
- [Why Is This Film Called "Birth"?: Investigating Jonathan Glazer's Mystery of the Heart](https://parallax-view.org/why-is-this-film-called-birth-investigating-jonathan-glazers-mystery-of-the-heart/): [Editor's Note: The House Next Door is currently reissuing a series of articles developed at 24LiesASecond, a now-defunct platform for provocative criticism with an underdog bite. Author Robert C. Cumbow is a member of the Parallax View collective and his essays are being published simultaneously on Parallax View. The essay below was first published on
- [Mario Bava: Master Choreographer of the Giallo's Dance of Death](https://parallax-view.org/mario-bava-master-choreographer-of-the-giallos-dance-of-death/): Mario Bava turns 100 this week. In tribute, Parallax View is pulling up this feature from the archives. [This is a revised and expanded version of an article originally published on Greencine, April 3, 2007] Mario Bava is a horror original. A painter and cinematographer turned director, a craftsman turned celluloid dreamer, an industry veteran
- [Thirteen Landmarks of Italian Horror; or, There's Always Room for Giallo](https://parallax-view.org/thirteen-landmarks-of-italian-horror-or-theres-always-room-for-giallo/): A mysterious stranger stalks a lovely young woman as the camera creeps in like a voyeuristic partner in crime. Black gloved hands reach for the lovely neck of a young maiden. The faceless killer strangles, stabs, slashes, or otherwise horribly murders her in front of our eyes, the camera lovingly recording every perverse detail. This
- [Together again for the first time: "Exorcist" prequel shows the franchise past its expiration date](https://parallax-view.org/exorcist-the-beginning/): [Originally written for Queen Anne News, 2004] As long as I can remember, I've loved horror movies. Growing up in a family and a small town that buried all the bad stuff under silence, politeness and euphemism, I took guilty pleasure in stories about monsters getting loose in the dark, scaring all the pillars of
- [The Light That Failed: George Romero's “Dead” Rock On](https://parallax-view.org/george-romeros-land-of-the-dead/): [Originally published in Queen Anne News, July 5, 2005]15 “Send some flowers to the cemetery,” growls the head honcho of a zombie-killing expedition at the beginning of George Romero's Land of the Dead. Then scarlet fireworks bloom in the sky and every shambling corpse in what used to be a Smalltown, USA—complete with rotting park
- ["The Descent": In the destructive element immerse...](https://parallax-view.org/the-descent/): [originally published in Queen Anne News, August 2006] I was telling my friend about The Descent, one of the most authentically terrifying horror movies I've seen in years, when she called a halt to my rhapsodizing about its scare tactics. She wasn't kidding. Movie stuff that comes oozing up from the darkness behind the brain
- [Keeping Score - Scary Music for Scary Movies](https://parallax-view.org/scary-music-for-scary-movies/): In the spirit of the Halloween season, here’s a list of 13 movie scores that stand out as landmarks in the honorable tradition of writing music designed to scare the pants off the movie viewer. 13. Jaws, John Williams, 1975. Any responsible list of scary movie music has to acknowledge the achievement of John Williams
- [Carousels, Circuses And Cathedrals: The Film Art of Max Ophuls](https://parallax-view.org/carousels-circuses-and-cathedrals-the-film-art-of-max-ophuls/): [Originally written in November, 2002 for the "Luminous Psyche" film series "The Films of Max Ophuls"] "But where would people like us get to if we couldn't get carried away?" --Max Ophuls When Max Ophuls died in 1957, his friend and collaborator Peter Ustinov (Le Plaisir's narrator, Lola Montès's Ringmaster) described the director as "a
- [Jonathan Demme on "Rachel Getting Married" - "As long as we are born into families, it's going to be a big deal"](https://parallax-view.org/jonathan-demme-on-rachel-getting-married-as-long-as-we-are-born-into-families-its-going-to-be-a-big-deal/): Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married may look like your basic Sundance/Slamdance indie feature, with its wandering handheld camerawork and ensemble riffing through the collisions and confrontations of a dysfunctional family reunion, but in his hands the familiar conflicts and clashes are invigorated by an authenticity and, dare I say it, a sense of rediscovery. The
- [Skolimowski: "Barrier" ( "Bariera")](https://parallax-view.org/skolimowski-barrier-bariera/): [Originally written for the University of Washington Office of Cinema Studies Film Series "Voices and Visions," April 20, 1982] Tight shot: a man's back, naked, bent, straining; his bands tied behind him; his head, whether yearning forward or bowed in fear and trembling, unseen. The posture faintly evokes your basic bullet-in-the-back-of-the-neck, Darkness at Noon–style execution. The
- ["Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown"](https://parallax-view.org/forget-it-jake-its-chinatown/): [originally published in Movietone News 33, July 1974] THE TITLES, shadow-masked to the old 1.33 format, roll up against a grey moderne background and give way to a series of black-and-white still photos. In the photos a man and a woman are making love, awkwardly, with their clothes on, in the woods. We hear groans—do
- ["Let's give them something to really work with" - Rick Schmidlin on revising "Touch of Evil"](https://parallax-view.org/rick-schmidlin-on-touch-of-evil/): My research into the unprecendented work done on Touch of Evil in 1998 began here, with a lengthy phone interview with Rick Schmidlin in August of 1998, a month before I'd even had a chance to see the new cut. The man who proposed the radical idea of creating a new version of the film
- ["A tremendous piece of filmmaking" - Walter Murch on "Touch of Evil"](https://parallax-view.org/walter-murch-on-touch-of-evil/): In 1998, while researching the revision of Touch of Evil, I pursued an interview with Walter Murch, then and now arguably the dean of American film sound and image editors. I had only an E-mail address. He responded with this very gracious message: Dear Sean: I received your email about Touch of Evil, and here
- [The Making, Unmaking and Reclamation of "Touch of Evil"](https://parallax-view.org/the-making-unmaking-and-reclamation-of-touch-of-evil/): "(Universal) told me that although they didn't know who was going to direct (Touch of Evil), Orson Welles was going to play the heavy. ‘You know, Orson Welles is a pretty good director,' I said. ‘Did it ever occur to you to have him direct it?' At the time Orson had not directed a picture
- ["Actors loved him" - Charlton Heston on Orson Welles and "Touch of Evil"](https://parallax-view.org/charlton-heston-on-touch-of-evil/): In 1998 I had the rare pleasure of interviewing Charlton Heston for the release of the Walter Murch-supervised "restoration" of Touch of Evil (1958). It was supposed to be the center of a essay on the film, but the article was canceled and the interview unpublished until earlier this year on my website. I republish
- ["A rough, jagged, jarring, shaking-you-up kind of movie" - Janet Leigh on "Touch of Evil"](https://parallax-view.org/janet-leigh-on-touch-of-evil/): In 1998, as Universal was preparing the theatrical release of the revised Touch of Evil, I was offered the opportunity to talk with star Janet Leigh about the film in a phone interview. I had yet to see the new version, so my questions were formed around my research and my familiarity with the previous
- ["A once in a lifetime project" - Bob O'Neil on restoring and revising "Touch of Evil"](https://parallax-view.org/bob-oneil-on-touch-of-evil/): Bob O'Neil was the head of film preservation and restoration at Universal in 1988. His job was to evaluate to all the materials Universal held in its film library and oversee the repair and restoration of elements for new prints and home video releases, everything from Hitchcock classics to Abbot and Costello movies to film
- [Tim Robbins - The Lucky One](https://parallax-view.org/tim-robbins-the-lucky-one/): When I got on the phone with Tim Robbins, who was doing a day of interviews to publicize his new film, The Lucky Ones, he began with all the energy of a guy doing just another job, giving out answers that had the feeling of a familiar response practiced over numerous interviews. I have to
- ["Touch of Evil": Crossing the Line](https://parallax-view.org/touch-of-evil-crossing-the-line/): [Editor's note: This essay was originally written in 1998, before the re-edited version from producer Rick Schmidlin and editor Walter Murch, and is based on the 109-minute version that was rescued from the vaults in 1975, generally known as the "preview version. This version had replaced the original 98-minute theatrical version in retrospective screenings and
- [“Writin' it down kinda makes me feel better”: Robert Altman's “Nashville”](https://parallax-view.org/writin-it-down-kinda-makes-me-feel-better-robert-altmans-nashville/): [Originally published in Movietone News no. 43, September 1975] Nashville is a film with a mirror in it. The mirror is Robert DoQui's face; specifically, his face at that moment when Jeff Goldblum takes the cap off the saltshaker at the airport lunch counter, pours the salt into his left hand, lifts the left hand
- [Altman and Coppola in the Seventies: Power and the People](https://parallax-view.org/altman-and-coppola-in-the-seventies-power-and-the-people/): [Editor's Note: The House Next Door is currently reissuing a series of articles developed at 24LiesASecond, a now-defunct platform for provocative criticism with an underdog bite. Author Bob Cumbow is a member of the Parallax View collective and his essays are being published simultaneously on Parallax View. The essay below was first published on 11/26/2005,
- ["Apocalypse Now": an audiovisual aid](https://parallax-view.org/apocalypse-now-an-audiovisual-aid/): [Originally published in The Weekly (Seattle), October 17, 1979] It was like another art altogether. That sombre theme had to be given a sinister resonance, a tonality of its own, a continued vibration that, I hoped, would hang in the air and dwell on the ear after the last note had been struck. —Joseph Conrad
- [Stuart Townsend's 'Battle' to celebrate American protest in film](https://parallax-view.org/stuart-townsends-battle-to-celebrate-american-protest-in-film/): Battle in Seattle, the directorial debut of Irish actor Stuart Townsend, is a well-meaning history lesson that looks at the 1999 WTO protests in Settle through a series of exceedingly conventional fictional stories. The film, which premiered a year ago at the Toronto International Film Festival and later became the most apropos opening night film
- [Art, Life and Politics](https://parallax-view.org/art-life-and-politics/): Art, Life and Politics With the arrival of Sarah Palin, American politics has strayed deep into Wag the Dog territory, but it wasn’t until last night, as even ad hoc members of Alaska’s First Family were lined up for her speech, that I realized that if I were Levi Johnston, I'd be very, very worried.
- [Alan Ball: "It's not my job as a filmmaker to make people feel comfortable"](https://parallax-view.org/alan-ball-its-not-my-job-as-a-filmmaker-to-make-people-feel-comfortable/): I had the opportunity to talk to Alan Ball about Towelhead, his first feature-film script after American Beauty and his feature directing debut, when he presented the film at the Seattle International Film Festival in June, 2008. Now that the film is getting a limited release in New York and L.A. (with a wider release
- [Love and Death - Ira Sachs on 'Married Life'](https://parallax-view.org/love-and-death-ira-sachs-on-married-life/): Ira Sachs' Married Life arrives on DVD this week. His follow-up to his Sundance Grand Prize-winning breakthrough film Forty Shades of Blue is an ambitious challenge: a 1940s melodrama of adultery and murder played as wry comedy of manners and directed in a naturalistic style with a modern sensibility. Perhaps comedy is a misleading label.
- [Steve Coogan: "Can we get away with this?"](https://parallax-view.org/steve-coogan-can-we-get-away-with-this/): I first "discovered" Steve Coogan through his film roles, first in The Wind in the Willows (aka Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, directed by and starring Monty Python's Terry Jones) and then taking the lead in Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People. It was only later that I finally saw the creation that made him famous
- ['Redbelt' on DVD - A second round with Mamet's magnificent martial arts drama](https://parallax-view.org/redbelt-on-dvd-a-second-round-with-mamets-magnificent-martial-arts-drama/): David Mamet's Redbelt arrives on DVD this week. I take the occasion of reviewing the film to work through some of my thoughts on what I believe is the smartest, sharpest and most unashamedly pure melding of personal filmmaking and genre filmmaking since Walter Hill's Undisputed, another magnificent fight film. I don't know that the
- [The Last Round-up: Budd Boetticher's Great Westerns Coming to DVD](https://parallax-view.org/budd-boettichers-great-westerns-rounded-up-for-a-box-set/): Last year, in a piece I wrote for GreenCine, I dreamed up my fantasy list of box sets and special editions I wanted to see (heck, I wanted to OWN) in the coming years. Less than year later, two of those dream DVD sets have been announced. (I doubt my piece had much to do
- [About Parallax View](https://parallax-view.org/about-parallax-view/): Parallax View is a loose collective of like-minded professional film writers in the Seattle area. We like to get together and talk about cinema. This site is a place to put some of those discussions, as well as essays, reviews, interviews and other thoughts on movies, out to a wider audience. And hopefully have some
- [Silverado](https://parallax-view.org/silverado/): This is the uncut version of a piece I wrote for the September 1985 Film Comment. Richard Corliss didn’t normally cut my stuff, but as usual I had written late and long, and at the last minute he needed to cede some space to the ads. —RTJ I said I liked Silverado and the editor
- [Brian Dennehy](https://parallax-view.org/brian-dennehy/): As you’ve probably heard by now, Brian Dennehy recently passed away, age 81. I always liked him. Here’s a 1996 cinebio no one got to read (no mention of his Broadway triumph as Willie Loman, just around the corner), and I hope not far away you’ll find a 1985 Film Comment piece I wrote about
- [Parallax View's Best of 2019](https://parallax-view.org/parallax-views-best-of-2019/): Welcome 2020 with one last look back at the best releases of 2019, as seen by the Parallax View contributors and friends. (In reverse alphabetical order by contributor) Richard T. Jameson 1. Once upon a Time ... in Hollywood 2. The Irishman 3. Marriage Story 4. Little Women 5. Midsommar 6. Richard Jewell 7. A
- [Forced Closure: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker](https://parallax-view.org/forced-closure-star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker/): A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, it sure was a whole lot easier to put a damned bow on a franchise. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, director J.J. Abrams’ return to the trilogy he kicked off with The Force Awakens, is clearly facing some monumental pressures in its quest to
- [I Wake Up Streaming - August 2019](https://parallax-view.org/i-wake-up-streaming-august-2019/): Small Screen Noir and Neo-Noir The history of television is full of great crime shows, from Dragnet to Hill Street Blues to Homicide: Life on the Street to The Wire and beyond, but small screen noir is a rare treasure indeed. Let's face it, TV rarely embraced the visual style or hard-bitten, world-weary, often cynical attitude that defined noir as much as subject
- [Review: Das Boot (2019)](https://parallax-view.org/review-das-boot-2019/): Das Boot shares the same title as Wolfgang Petersen's 1981 film (and is technically a sequel), but familiarity with the original is unnecessary to start the series. Also based on the novel Das Boot by Lothar-Günther Buchheim as well its sequel Die Festung, the 2019 series is set in late 1942, nine months after the film's finale, with a
- [Review: I Am the Night](https://parallax-view.org/review-i-am-the-night/): We can thank Wonder Woman for the miniseries I Am the Night. Director Patty Jenkins not only connected with her star, Chris Pine, over the project, but Pine's interest inspired a new character in the screenplay her husband, Sam Sheridan, was writing. The result is an "inspired by a true story" six-part TV-miniseries as dark and lurid as
- [Review: Piranahs](https://parallax-view.org/review-piranahs/): Fifteen-year-old Nicola (Francesco Di Napoli) is a good kid in a bad situation. His Naples neighborhood is terrorized by gangsters and his single mother is barely holding on with the onerous protection money payments. So, this smart, ambitious kid organizes his buddies into a gang, appeals to the former neighborhood Don (now an outcast for
- [I Wake Up Streaming - July 2019](https://parallax-view.org/i-wake-up-streaming-july-2019/): The Criterion Channel The Columbia Noir Collection that headlined the launch of The Criterion Channel is now gone, along with a few other choice noir classics spotlighted a few months back, but a new selection has arrived in the past couple of months. Did you miss On Dangerous Ground (1951) on TCM's Noir Alley last month? Criterion
- [Japanese Girls at the Harbor](https://parallax-view.org/japanese-girls-at-the-harbor/): When Hiroshi Shimizu released Japanese Girls at the Harbor in 1933, the veteran filmmaker had already made more than eighty-five films. When he died in 1966, he had at least 160 films to his credit in a thirty-five-year career, most of them made at Shochiku, also the home of his friend and colleague Yasujiro Ozu. In his
- [I Wake Up Streaming - May 2019](https://parallax-view.org/i-wake-up-streaming-may-2019/): Kanopy is one of the best kept secrets of the streaming world. A free service available through most public and college libraries, it features a robust selection of American indies, foreign films, and educational programming. And thanks to deals with Criterion, Kino Lorber, the Cohen Film Collection, and other libraries, it has perhaps the most
- [Implosion Round: 'John Wick: Chapter 3' Pushes it to the Limit](https://parallax-view.org/implosion-round-john-wick-chapter-3/): Video game designers often rhapsodize about Core Loops, those small, quickly repeatable moments of coolness that can keep players glued to the controller past the point of thumb-trauma. 2014’s John Wick made this phenomenon into a spectator sport, devising a seemingly infinite (and distressingly satisfying) variety of ways for Keanu Reeves to inflict grievous bodily
- [A Rich and Varied World: Highlights of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival](https://parallax-view.org/a-rich-and-varied-world-highlights-of-the-san-francisco-silent-film-festival/): The great misconception of silent cinema is that it's all about movies that lack the dimension of sound. It's the idea of "lack" they get wrong. Apart from the oft-stated fact that silent cinema was never silent—from the biggest movie palaces to the smallest storefront theaters, the movies were always accompanied with music and often
- [Nuff Said: 'Avengers: Endgame' Nails the Dismount](https://parallax-view.org/nuff-said-avengers-endgame/): Sealing the Deal tends to take low priority in the movies these days, with measured resolutions and logical endpoints largely phased out in favor of open-ended tosses to various cinematic universes. Happily, though, Marvel’s gargantuan, decade-in-the-making Avengers: Endgame largely nails the dismount, blending clever callbacks and newfound cosmic hooey into a satisfyingly constructed mass of
- [Review: Trouble is My Business](https://parallax-view.org/review-trouble-is-my-business/): Disgraced private detective Roland Drake is on the verge of being evicted from his crummy little office—the glass door is scarred with tell-tale signs of a partner's name haphazardly scraped off—when she slinks in. "She had a face that could launch a thousand ships and a body that would bring them back," he monotones in
- [I Wake Up Streaming - April 2019](https://parallax-view.org/i-wake-up-streaming-april-2019-criterion-channel/): Amazon Prime Video Amazon Prime Video is now streaming Charles Laughton's great American gothic noir The Night of the Hunter (1955) starring Robert Mitchum in a fire and brimstone performance as a demonic con man in preacher man's robes. It's one of the most beautiful pastoral nightmares the cinema has seen. Hulu Hulu presents Karyn Kusama's hard-edged Destroyer (2018,
- [High Life: Harsh Mistress](https://parallax-view.org/high-life-harsh-mistress/): The Final Frontier has received any number of varied cinematic treatments over the years, ranging from a Kubrickian adherence to physics, to full-on Road Runnerish refusals to honor the laws of gravity. High Life, the latest barbed wonder from Claire Denis, makes its particular approach to the void clear from the first few moments. Here,
- [I Wake Up Streaming - March 2019](https://parallax-view.org/i-wake-up-streaming-march-2019/): I just started a new monthly column for the Film Noir Foundation that searches out and showcases classic film noir available to stream. Here is the debut installment.... As any fan of classic movies seeking treasures on streaming services knows, it's a wasteland out there. There are oases, of course, but at any given time
- [Uneven Beams: 'Captain Marvel'](https://parallax-view.org/uneven-beams-captain-marvel/): Saluting a megalithic juggernaut for taking risks is a bit of a mug’s game, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been in a winningly funky mood lately, alternating the large-scale Sturm and Drang of the Avengers series with lighter, more idiosyncratic fare. (Yes, I realize that something like Thor: Ragnarok is light years away from
- [Review: Arctic](https://parallax-view.org/review-arctic/): There are a couple dozen lines of dialogue in Arctic, plus an assortment of grunts. As it happens, we don’t need even that much spoken information: The simplicity of writer/director Joe Penna’s approach and the magnificence of Mads Mikkelsen’s acting is more than enough to make this survival tale a gripping experience. One of Penna’s best
- [The Best Current Source For Streaming Classic Movies is ... Amazon Prime?](https://parallax-view.org/the-best-current-source-for-streaming-classic-movies-is-amazon-prime/): What is the classic movie fan to do in the era of Netflix? For a few glorious years FilmStruck was our salvation, offering a rich, well-curated collection of films from the silent era through the 1970s, something Netflix gave up on years ago. So with FilmStruck dead, where can the fan of classic movies—let's say,
- [Review: Under the Volcano](https://parallax-view.org/review-under-the-volcano/): [Originally published in The Weekly, July 8, 1984] Ah, the past has filled up quicker than we know, and God has little patience with remorse. —Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano Adapt a novel of consequence to the screen and you'll damn well answer for it. At best, your pride of achievement will have, quite properly,
- [Chasing the Hat](https://parallax-view.org/chasing-the-hat/): [This article first appeared in the September-October 1990 issue of Film Comment. It was reprinted in the National Society of Film Critics anthology They Went Thataway: Redefining Film Genres (1995).] Ice dropping into a heavy-bottomed glass: cold, hard, sensuous. The first image in Miller's Crossing hits our ears before it hits the screen, but it's
- [Review: The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-lego-movie-2-the-second-part/): Batman is wearing a white bat-helmet, his costume dotted with sparkles that set off his fabulous ermine cape. I think at this point there is no question that the Batman from the Lego movies has eclipsed the Dark and Brooding™ Batman of Warner Brothers’ DC film cycle. No wonder Ben Affleck is opting out of the live-action
- [Who We Would’ve Nominated For 2019 Academy Awards](https://parallax-view.org/who-we-wouldve-nominated-for-2019-academy-awards/): While the Oscars remain the one artistic award show that really matters, it’s frustrating how flawed and exclusionary they remain. Still, only certain types of movies are even considered for nominations — sure, a horror film like Get Out or a comic-book movie like Black Panther can get nominated, but they’re the exceptions that prove the rule (and ones that would’ve
- [Elvis and the Death of the American Dream, Through Movies](https://parallax-view.org/elvis-and-the-death-of-the-american-dream-through-movies/): Elvis Presley is ostensibly the subject of The King, Eugene Jarecki’s expansive road movie of a documentary. The award-winning director drives Presley’s 1963 Rolls-Royce across the US, from Mississippi and Memphis to Nashville, New York, Las Vegas, Hollywood, and elsewhere, talking to historians, musicians, members of Presley’s inner circle, and everyday Americans. Elvis centers the film
- [Review: Stan & Ollie](https://parallax-view.org/review-stan-ollie/): Playing a comedy genius is surely 10 times harder than playing another category of intellectual brilliance. If you’re cast as Albert Einstein, you put on a fright wig and spout a few equations — everybody thinks you’re brilliant. Play a famous singer, and they can always dub the voice. In the current At Eternity’s Gate, Willem
- [Review: Cold War](https://parallax-view.org/review-cold-war/): I saw Cold War last summer at a film festival in Ukraine, where I was on an awards jury. When it concluded, I stood up and declared aloud to no one in particular, “We have just seen the winner of the next Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.” Of course I didn’t actually do that. Who am I to stand
- [Film Noir on Blu-ray: ‘Moonrise,’ ‘Gun Crazy,’ ‘No Orchids,’ and the restored ‘Man Who Cheated Himself’](https://parallax-view.org/film-noir-blu-ray-moonrise-gun-crazy-no-orchids-restored-man-who-cheated-himself/): The Man Who Cheated Himself (Flicker Alley, Blu-ray+DVD)Moonrise (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD)Gun Crazy (Warner Archive, Blu-ray)No Orchids for Miss Blandish (Kino, Blu-ray, DVD) Lee J. Cobb takes the lead as Lt. Ed Cullen, a veteran Homicide detective in a secret affair with socialite Lois Frazer (Jane Wyatt) while she’s in the midst of a divorce, in The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950),
- [Blu-ray Animation: Deluxe ‘Totoro’ and the complete ‘Batman’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-animation-deluxe-totoro-and-the-complete-batman/): My Neighbor Totoro: 30th Anniversary Edition (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray)Batman: The Complete Animated Series (Warner Bros., Blu-ray) Hayao Miyazaki is one of Japan’s living treasures, a beloved filmmaker whose animated films number among the most beautiful and most enchanting productions ever drawn by hand. In this day of CGI productions, the aging artists still personally draws his key frames
- [Noir Now Playing: 1983](https://parallax-view.org/noir-now-playing-1983/): The title of 1983, a murder mystery turned conspiracy thriller from writer/creator Joshua Long, is more than an oblique reference to George Orwell's 1984. Set in a parallel 2003 where the Berlin Wall never fell and the Communist Party has a chokehold on Poland, this alternate history opens on the 20th anniversary of devastating terrorist attacks. The
- [Review: If Beale Street Could Talk](https://parallax-view.org/review-if-beale-street-could-talk/): When you win the Best Picture Oscar, you’ve got a choice: play it safe or take a chance. Moonlight director Barry Jenkins obviously decided to gamble. Jenkins’ follow-up to his intense 2016 prize-winner is If Beale Street Could Talk, a complex, offbeat adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel. The story revolves around Tish (wondrous newcomer KiKi Layne) and Fonny
- [Review: Aquaman](https://parallax-view.org/review-aquaman/): At its most inspired moments, Aquaman plunges straight into the deep end—like when a giant octopus commences an undersea gladiatorial contest by rapping its tentacles across a collection of oversized drums, or when someone offers the movie’s villain a weapon that “converts water into beams of energized plasma.” I mean, if a movie is going to be
- [Review: Mary Poppins Returns](https://parallax-view.org/review-mary-poppins-returns/): The first soundtrack album I ever knew deeply was Mary Poppins, and of all the delightful songs from that movie, the one that really stirred my childhood self was the chimney sweep’s anthem, “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” It took me a few years to understand that songs in a minor key sound darker than songs in a
- [Review: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse](https://parallax-view.org/review-spider-man-into-the-spider-verse/): The new Spider-Man movie opens with an apology about being yet another Spider-Man movie, which pretty much sets the tone: This is a flip, oh-so-postmodern take on a franchise that won’t stop rebooting itself. An animated Marvel saga, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse tips its hat to the existing Spider-Man movie thread while introducing the idea that multiple
- [Review: Return to Paradise](https://parallax-view.org/review-return-to-paradise-1998/): [Originally written for Amazon in 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. In Malaysia, three young Americans with little else in common are united in a shared
- [Blu-ray: Orson Welles’ ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ on Criterion](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-orson-welles-the-magnificent-ambersons-on-criterion/): The Magnificent Ambersons (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD) How did it take so long for the sophomore feature from Orson Welles to finally get its Blu-ray debut? I don’t need an answer, I’m just thrilled that it’s finally here, and in such a beautiful edition. The magnificence of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) is apparent from the first frames of the
- [Review: Roma](https://parallax-view.org/review-roma/): The opening shot of Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma is a self-contained masterpiece—no surprise, considering the mind-boggling opening shots of Children of Men and Gravity, the Oscar-winning director’s two previous features. Here, our focus on a section of elegant floor tiles is interrupted by a wash of water that flows in waves across the floor, a mysterious image that turns out to
- [Review: 'The Favourite'](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-favourite/): Along with its other wicked attractions, The Favourite serves as a corrective to all those fluffy period movies where pretty costumes and set design function as the cinematic equivalent of a bubble bath. The art direction is plenty handsome here, too, and the film will likely collect a few Oscars for its physical production. But The Favourite uses its
- [Bernard Bertolucci's 'Partner'](https://parallax-view.org/bernard-bertoluccis-partner/): [originally written for NoShame Films, August 27, 2005] Our subject is primarily life, but if you feel that life's missing something, steal a camera and try to give life a style. Partner, Bernardo Bertolucci's third feature film, has always been one of the most elusive of the director's endeavors: a forthrightly experimental work—"a film that
- [Review: Green Book](https://parallax-view.org/review-green-book/): You know an actor’s in the groove when a simple grunt conveys not only an entire character arc, but a movie’s essential meaning. Such a moment comes late in Green Book, and it’s one of a thousand things to savor about the performances in this film. The groan emerges from the beefed-up body of Viggo Mortensen,
- [Review: Robin Hood (2018)](https://parallax-view.org/review-robin-hood-2018/): The Sheriff of Nottingham is throwing a big party, and Maid Marian asks Robin Hood if he’ll be attending. She tells Robin she “got an invite” to the party, and at that point I think I mentally checked out of the new Robin Hood. It’s bad enough that people use “invite” as a noun in 2018.
- [Chained for life: Bertolucci regrets rien in ‘The Dreamers’](https://parallax-view.org/chained-for-life-bertolucci-regrets-rien-in-the-dreamers/): [Originally written for Queen Anne/Magnolia News, 2004] There is a moment in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Before the Revolution when the protagonist, the scion of an Italian noble family, learns that a friend has taken his own life. He had been speaking with the young man only hours before and declined his fervent proposal that they go
- [Review: Luna](https://parallax-view.org/review-luna/): [Originally published in The Weekly (Seattle), October 30, 1979] Cinema comes so naturally to some filmmakers. Bernardo Bertolucci once revealed that he dreamed camera movements years before laying hands on a camera. But even without this confessional nudge, his aptitude for the medium, his kinesthetic thrall with luminosity, surfaces, colors, trajectories, is apparent in the
- [Bernardo Bertolucci](https://parallax-view.org/bernardo-bertolucci/): [originally published in a booklet for the DVD release of Partner by NoShame in 2005] The political and the sensual meet in the cinema of Bernardo Bertolucci. His visually dense and stylistically labyrinthine films are among the most beautiful -- and the most provocative (The Last Tango in Paris) -- ever made.His career straddles canvases
- [What to stream: ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ on VOD, ‘First Reformed’ on Amazon, ‘Sorry to Bother You’ on Hulu](https://parallax-view.org/what-to-stream-crazy-rich-asians-on-vod-first-reformed-on-amazon-sorry-to-bother-you-on-hulu/): Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, FilmStruck, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … A Chinese-American professor (Constance Wu) collides with the culture of the ultra-rich in Singapore when she meets her boyfriend’s family in Crazy Rich Asians (2018, PG-13), the hit romantic comedy based on the
- [Holiday Movie Streaming Picks](https://parallax-view.org/holiday-movie-streaming-picks/): The holiday season is already arranged around rituals, so it makes sense that we come back to the same movies every year. In certain households annual showings of A Christmas Story or Elf or It’s a Wonderful Life are as rigorously observed as the lighting of Advent or Hanukkah candles. I’m not necessarily comparing religious belief with the secular comforts of Mr.
- [What to stream: ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ and ‘Kominsky Method’ on Netflix, ‘The Children Act’ on Amazon](https://parallax-view.org/what-to-stream-the-ballad-of-buster-scruggs-and-kominsky-method-on-netflix-the-children-act-on-amazon/): Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, FilmStruck, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Netflix broke with its policy for the release of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018, R), the American frontier comedy from the Coen Brothers. Initially planned as a six-part series featuring the likes
- [Reviews: Widows](https://parallax-view.org/reviews-widows/): Widows probably works best as a three-minute trailer (punchy and funny) or a longform miniseries (deep and complicated). It’s a movie, though, which means we’re stuck with a fitfully engaging, 129-minute feature that only occasionally gets out of gear. The film is actually based on a miniseries, broadcast in England in the 1980s. Adapted here by
- [Review: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-ballad-of-buster-scruggs/): Too bad the title of the new multi-story Coen brothers film is taken from the first of its episodes. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs has the ring of a cartoon spoof, and it’s a perfectly suitable title for the film’s first segment, a Western sendup so broad it reminds us that every Coen brothers film
- [Review: Firelight](https://parallax-view.org/review-firelight/): [Originally written for Mr. Showbiz, September 4, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. “What is it about this house? The moment I walk in, I want
- [Review: Love and Death on Long Island](https://parallax-view.org/love-and-death-on-long-island/): [Originally written for The Herald in 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. Its title and subject matter may suggest a heavy arthouse experience. But make no
- [What to stream: Chris Pine is ‘Outlaw King’ on Netflix, ‘Incredibles 2’ and ‘BlacKkKlansman’ on VOD](https://parallax-view.org/what-to-stream-chris-pine-is-outlaw-king-on-netflix-incredibles-2-and-blackkklansman-on-vod/): Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, Showtime Anytime, FilmStruck, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Chris Pine stars in Outlaw King (2018, R) as Robert the Bruce, the 14th century Scottish nobleman who claimed the crown of Scotland and rallied his country to battle the occupying British army of
- [Review: Outlaw King](https://parallax-view.org/review-outlaw-king/): The opening sequence of Outlaw King screams out one thing loud and clear: Forget about Netflix! Yes, we’ve just seen the corporate logo onscreen, but director David Mackenzie immediately launches into a bravura sequence that bombards us with big-screen movie-ness: In one complicated, unbroken shot—maybe seven or eight minutes long?—we watch political allegiances forged, hand-to-hand combat between
- [Review: Primary Colors](https://parallax-view.org/review-primary-colors/): [Originally written for Mr. Showbiz, March 20, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. It will be fascinating to see what Primary Colors, Mike Nichols’s smart, creepy,
- [Review: Bohemian Rhapsody](https://parallax-view.org/review-bohemian-rhapsody/): It occupies only a small part of the movie, but Mike Myers’ casting as a skeptical record executive in Bohemian Rhapsody is a masterstroke. Haloed by a 1970s perm and growling with philistine contempt for the arty band in his office, Myers gives the movie audience something tangible to root against. He thinks the members of Queen
- [Review: The Spanish Prisoner](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-spanish-prisoner/): [Originally written for Mr. Showbiz, April 3, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. Put aside any thought of the Inquisition, or revolutionary political cabals, or Spanish
- [Review: Gods and Monsters](https://parallax-view.org/review-gods-and-monsters/): [Originally written for Seattle Weekly, November 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. In Bill Condon’s God and Monsters the ghost of Frankenstein’s monster haunts James Whale
- [Screaming and Streaming](https://parallax-view.org/screaming-and-streaming/): If I had to trace the origins of my compulsion to seek scary movies for Halloween, I might picture myself in childhood, horrified by a TV broadcast of Disney’s cartoon adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I can still picture the Headless Horseman heaving that flaming jack-o’-lantern right at me. Countless nights spent enthralled by
- [Review: Vampires](https://parallax-view.org/review-vampires/): [Originally written for Seattle Weekly, November 4, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. John Carpenter has wanted to make a western for years. Now he’s finally
- [Review: Psycho (1998)](https://parallax-view.org/review-psycho-1998/): [Originally written for Mr. Showbiz, December 4, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. Is there anybody on this planet who doesn’t know Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror-suspense
- [Review: Meet Joe Black](https://parallax-view.org/review-meet-joe-black/): [Originally written for Film.com in 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. Martin Brest is one of Hollywood's choosier directors, a man whose output in the last
- [Review: Halloween (2018)](https://parallax-view.org/review-halloween-2018/): Michael Myers has been coming home for decades now, ever since he rampaged through the town of Haddonfield, Ill., in the 1978 horror masterpiece Halloween. The masked killer was supposed to be locked securely within a psychiatric hospital, but he escaped through many sequels and spin-offs. We’re supposed to forget all about those for the new Halloween,
- [Review: Sadie](https://parallax-view.org/review-sadie/): At the beginning of a movie, you look for little indicators that you’re in good hands. It could be a neatly-choreographed action scene, an actor’s brilliant monologue, or a fantastic “How did they do that?” camera move. In Sadie, I got that feeling from a plate of Ritz crackers. We’ve just met the 13-year-old title character
- [Review: Small Soldiers](https://parallax-view.org/review-small-soldiers/): [Originally written for Seattle Weekly, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. About halfway through Small Soldiersit struck me: just who is this film’s audience? On the
- [Review: The General (1998)](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-general-1998/): [Originally written for Mr. Showbiz, December 18, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. John Boorman has been a great filmmaker for more than thirty years now,
- [Review: First Man](https://parallax-view.org/review-first-man/): Does space travel, including a stroll on the Moon, change a person? In First Man, the answer to this question is, resoundingly: Eh, not so much. This is the story of Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on the Moon. Director Damien Chazelle, who won an Oscar for La La Land, reunites with Ryan Gosling to paint
- [Review: A Year of the Quiet Sun](https://parallax-view.org/review-a-year-of-the-quiet-sun/): [Originally published in The Weekly, November 13, 1985] Physicist/philosopher/filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi has told how he was once hired by a French couple to teach their children Russian. They assumed that, as a Pole, he would have to know the language of the nation in effective political control of his country. Zanussi knew Russian, to be
- [Review: A Simple Favor](https://parallax-view.org/review-a-simple-favor/): Stephanie Smothers, a suburban overachiever played by Anna Kendrick with spunky energy and self-effacing deflection, is the widowed mother of a son in elementary school. Into her life steps Emily Nelson (Blake Lively), a sleek urban professional with no maternal instincts––like a high- society shark forcibly moved from her hunting ground to a tranquil aquarium
- [Review: A Star Is Born](https://parallax-view.org/review-a-star-is-born/): [Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly] The new update of A Star Is Born almost—almost—makes the 1976 Barbra Streisand/Kris Kristofferson version look like a coherent movie. And that, my friends, takes some doing. You know A Star Is Born: fully ripened Hollywood melodrama, usually served with music. A well-established star, struggling with sobriety, romances an unknown talent
- [Review: Blaze](https://parallax-view.org/review-blaze/): Most musical biopics operate around a familiar set of scenes: the humble beginnings, the record deal, the first time the hero’s song is heard on the radio, the challenges from drugs/alcohol/success that are finally overcome. The one surefire part of the story is the rise to fame and the thrills associated with the big break.
- [Review: The Thin Red Line (SAx)](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-thin-red-line-sax/): [Originally written for Seattle Weekly, January 6, 1999] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. Terrence Malick’s breathlessly anticipated return to the director’s chair The Thin Red Line rewrites
- [Review: The Thin Red Line (RTJ)](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-thin-red-line/): [Originally written for Mr. Showbiz, December 25, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. Few films have aroused higher expectations than The Thin Red Line, the first
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of September 23](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-september-23/): Filmmaker Magazine has released its annual survey of 25 New Faces of Independent Film, an always engaging read of directors, actors, and the occasional director of photography to follow—and look out for, as several of the most promising figures are just on the cusp of graduating from shorts to their first feature. Coincidentally a similar
- [Review: The House with a Clock in Its Walls](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-house-with-a-clock-in-its-walls/): [Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly] The house contains skulls, mummified hands, and stained-glass windows that come alive. Secret panels lurk in the corners, and the dusty old books are full of spells for raising the dead. In short, this is my dream house when I was 11 years old. The place is the
- [Review: Mandy](https://parallax-view.org/review-mandy/): Let us assert that Nicolas Cage is at his most essential when you either love him or hate him. Think of his blood-drinking executive in Vampire’s Kiss, or his Wild at Heart outlaw, or his tragically flop-sweat-soaked screenwriter in Adaptation. Even his best romantic leads have a screw loose, as in Moonstruckor Peggy Sue Got Married. Just ask his Peggy Sue co-star Kathleen
- [Review: Bulworth](https://parallax-view.org/review-bulworth/): [Originally written for Mr. Showbiz, May 15, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. It’s the 1996 primary season, and if the populace is unaroused, U.S. senator
- [Fall Movie Preview 2018](https://parallax-view.org/fall-movie-preview-2018/): You know the summer movie season is over when people start talking about Melissa McCarthy winning an Oscar for a true-life drama and not about her languishing through a much-derided adult puppet comedy. That’s right—it’s fall. Bring on the earnest biopics about figures as different as Neil Armstrong and Freddie Mercury, and movies about drug
- [Review: Twilight](https://parallax-view.org/review-twilight/): [Originally written for Mr. Showbiz, March 6, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. Twilight is a pretty good movie that will give steady pleasure to some
- [Review: Affliction](https://parallax-view.org/review-affliction/): [Originally written for Seattle Weekly, February 18, 1999] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. The Whitehouse brothers, Wade (Nick Nolte) and Rolfe (Willem Dafoe) Whitehouse, chat together
- [Review: Searching](https://parallax-view.org/review-searching/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly Back when Hollywood discovered the internet as a plot device—ushering in a period of movies about people frantically tapping on their keyboards—one major annoyance was the depiction of the internet itself. They almost always got it wrong. In movies like The Net (1995) or Sneakers (1992), the internet resembled a Hollywood art
- [Review: Last Days of Disco](https://parallax-view.org/review-last-days-of-disco/): [Originally written for Film.com, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. Characters from Whit Stillman's previous films, Metropolitan and Barcelona, turn up in cameo roles amongst the
- [Review: Les Misérables](https://parallax-view.org/review-les-miserables/): [Originally written for Mr. Showbiz, May 1, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. As fodder for film, Victor Hugo’s mammoth 19th-century novel Les Misérables has rarely
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of August 25](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-august-25/): “Five years later, Lang's obsession with the tribunal made its appearance, and he was able to launch a frontal assault upon the real world, by opposing to the idea of transcendent justice the actuality of the man-made laws determining our daily lives. For the first time Lang openly attacked the official representation of authority, and
- [Review: Support the Girls](https://parallax-view.org/review-support-the-girls/): Review by Robert Horton of Seattle Weekly As mid-career rewards go, Support the Girls is a well-deserved gift for Regina Hall. Long appreciated as a comic performer (her loyalty to the Scary Movie franchise was above and beyond the call of duty) but too often underused as a leading man’s wife or girlfriend, Hall assumes full ownership of this
- [Review: Out of Sight](https://parallax-view.org/review-out-of-sight/): [Originally written for Mr. Showbiz, August 7, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. After years of mishandling by Hollywood, crime novelist Elmore Leonard has been on
- [Review: A Price Above Rubies](https://parallax-view.org/review-a-price-above-rubies/): [Originally written for Mr. Showbiz, March 27, 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. It was a distant early warning sign that A Price Above Rubies began
- [Review: First Reformed](https://parallax-view.org/review-first-reformed/): Anyone who has followed the career of Paul Schrader could fall into the trap of simply cataloguing the ways in which First Reformed (2018) is a summation of his themes and inspirations. Imagine the promotional possibilities: “From the author of “Transcendental Cinema” and “Notes on Film Noir” and the screenwriter of Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ.” First Reformed leans
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of August 18](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-august-18-2/): “Oh yes, [The Blue Bird] is actually totally crazy if you ask me. In that regard it is Maurice’s most radical film. He even painted the intertitles himself and managed almost every stage of the production. I think this was the closest he came to his idea of creating a complete artwork. Which is also
- [Review: Puzzle](https://parallax-view.org/review-puzzle/): August is not too early to start the Oscar guessing game, especially when the Academy itself is already teasing big changes for next year. A few days ago they breathlessly—and idiotically—announced the creation of a new award, for “Achievement in Popular Film,” details to be hammered out later. It’s Hollywood admitting they make a lot
- [Blu-ray: ‘Dragon Inn’ / ‘Legend of the Mountain’ – King Hu on Criterion and Kino](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-dragon-inn-legend-of-the-mountain-king-hu-on-criterion-and-kino/): Dragon Inn (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD)Legend of the Mountain (Kino, Blu-ray, DVD) After the success of Come Drink With Me, the pioneering wuxia pian (“martial chivalry”) adventure that mixed martial arts, romance, comic action, and historical settings, Hong Kong director King Hu went to Taiwan for the opportunity to make films with greater freedom. Dragon Inn (also known as Dragon Gate Inn,
- [Review: You've Got Mail](https://parallax-view.org/review-youve-got-mail/): [Originally written for Film.com in 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years. I saw You've Got Mail in a spanking-new multiplex located in a spanking-new downtown development,
- [Review: The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez](https://parallax-view.org/ballad-of-gregorio-cortez-richard-jameson/): [Originally published in The Weekly, September 28, 1983] I approached last week's invitational screening of The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez with a sense of grim duty. I'd had three chances to see the film over the past year or so—on PBS-TV, in the Eighth Seattle International Film Festival, and earlier this month at the Tenth
- [Criterion Blu-ray: Dietrich & Von Sternberg in Hollywood](https://parallax-view.org/criterion-blu-ray-dietrich-von-sternberg-in-hollywood/): Dietrich & Von Sternberg in Hollywood (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD) At the dawn of the sound era, as German movie star Emil Jannings left Hollywood to return to Germany, the actor invited Austrian-born/American-raised director Josef von Sternberg (who directed Jannings in The Last Command, 1928) to Universum Film A.G. to direct him in that studio’s first sound film, The
- [Review: Saving Private Ryan](https://parallax-view.org/review-saving-private-ryan/): [Originally written for Mr. Showbiz in 1998] Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films originally published 20 years ago by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for many years. There are moments in Saving Private Ryan when the warfare becomes so intense
- [Blu-ray: ‘Curse of the Cat People’ from Shout! Factory](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-curse-of-the-cat-people-from-shout-factory/): Curse of the Cat People (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray) The success of the original 1942 Cat People, a shadowy psychological horror film simmering with sexual repression, prompted RKO to request a sequel from producer Val Lewton. His solution was surprising and inventive: Curse of the Cat People (1944), a psychological drama with a child’s perspective and a twist of ghost
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of August 3](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-august-3/): In 2013 Taschen commissioned Jonathan Rosenbaum to write an original essay on each of Jacques Tati’s features for a planned book on the director. Five years later and the book is nowhere in sight, so Rosenbaum has posted his typically thorough, insightful comments on his website: Delving into the color restoration of Jour de fete (“How adding
- [Review: The Miseducation of Cameron Post](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-miseducation-of-cameron-post/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly Every kid at the gay-conversion-therapy center must draw an iceberg. If they can fill in the huge, below-water section of the iceberg with reasons for their homosexual activity, they will better understand how they could have slipped from the straight path. And then they will be “cured.” In The
- [Review: Generation Wealth](https://parallax-view.org/review-generation-wealth/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly If you look at recent headlines and conclude that society is about to implode, the new documentary Generation Wealth is here to confirm your worst fears. This movie is a mosaic of distorted values and conspicuous consumption. I would say it’s like being locked in a room showing a repeated
- [Blu-ray: A Matter of Life and Death](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-a-matter-of-life-and-death/): A Matter of Life and Death (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD) Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (1946), originally released in the U.S. as Stairway to Heaven, is as gorgeous and romantic as films come. The film opens with a celestial prologue and narration providing a sense of cosmic comfort of someone watching over it all, of
- [Review: Mission: Impossible — Fallout](https://parallax-view.org/review-mission-impossible-fallout/): This hellzapoppin’ sequel delivers a string of unlikely but wonderfully executed stunts; it’s a summer movie that knows exactly what it’s doing.
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of July 27](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-july-27/): “The pioneers who made these movies did so despite the industry’s early male domination and, for a time, they flourished. The scholar Shelley Stamp, who curated the Kino Lorber set, believes that at least two questions are worth considering when we talk about what happened to these women: “Why did they disappear?” and “Why have we
- [Perpetual Motion: 'Mission: Impossible – Fallout'](https://parallax-view.org/perpetual-motion-mission-impossible-fallout/): The greatest action movies—the ones that can make you feel like simultaneously applauding and waving a lighter in the theater—tend to be those most adept at seemingly losing control, somehow maintaining a fluid anything-can-happen vibe while also sporting atomic clock choreography. The ecstatically touted Mission: Impossible - Fallout is an amazingly entertaining blockbuster in a
- [Review: Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot](https://parallax-view.org/review-dont-worry-he-wont-get-far-on-foot/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly Portland’s resident filmmaking genius, Gus Van Sant, can go either way. Sometimes he’s mainstream (lest we forget Good Will Hunting) and sometimes he’s experimental (in the remarkable Elephant and Gerry). For his latest film, he wears both hats. Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot is Van Sant’s tribute to fellow Portland
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of July 20](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-july-20/): When one site offers two articles of note, I usually try to yoke them with a shared theme. Sometimes they make it easy (see the next entry), and sometimes Criterion has Amy Taubin on the prescience of sex, lies, and videotape on our current mediated intimacy and the future outline of Steven Soderbergh’s career (“In
- [Cut to the Chaste - 'sex, lies, and videotape'](https://parallax-view.org/cut-to-the-chaste-sex-lies-and-videotape/): [Originally published in 7 Days on August 9, 1989] sex, lies and videotape was released this week in a Criterion special edition on Blu-ray and DVD. Parallax View republishes this archival piece to mark the occasion. Steven Soderbergh wrote the screenplay for sex, lies, and videotape during an eight-day drive from Baton Rouge to Los
- [Sex, lies and, Soderbergh](https://parallax-view.org/sex-lies-and-soderbergh/): [Originally published on IndieWire on January 15, 2014] sex, lies, and videotape was released this week in a Criterion special edition on Blu-ray and DVD. Parallax View republishes this archival piece to mark the occasion. "When I was coming up, making an independent film and trying to reach an audience was like, trying to hit
- [Review: Honeysuckle Rose](https://parallax-view.org/review-honeysuckle-rose-2/): Here’s a contemporaneous review of a movie little remembered now, but as it chanced, the film marked the late Robby Müller’s first encounter with the American land and its light. —RTJ [Originally published in The Weekly, July 23, 1980] Honeysuckle Rose is the latest film by Jerry Schatzberg, a modestly intelligent filmmaker who specializes in probing
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of July 13](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-july-13/): “Clocking in at almost twenty minutes, this sequence unfolds within the confines of the inn, showcasing what the director can accomplish in such a stage-bound setting. Without sacrificing precision, Hu switches up his approach, alternating between stretches of languor and frantic motion, between long shots that map out zones of brewing tension and close-ups that
- [Review: On the Seventh Day](https://parallax-view.org/review-on-the-seventh-day/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly The first thing you notice about On the Seventh Day (En el Séptimo Día) is that it doesn’t sound like a sports movie. In the opening sequence we watch a soccer game in a Brooklyn neighborhood park, and it takes a moment to adjust to the realism: There’s no inspirational music swelling
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of July 7](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-july-7/): Farran Smith Nehme on Josef von Sternberg, Michael Koresky on 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,' interviews with Lars von Trier and David Lynch, and more
- [Unforced Perspective: 'Ant-Man and The Wasp'](https://parallax-view.org/unforced-perspective-ant-man-and-the-wasp/): At a time when comic book movies were steadily cranking up the Sturm und Drang, 2015’s Ant-Man served as an amiably slouching alternative, gently snarking at superheroic conventions while still staying within the Marvel mandated lines. What’s more, it was one of the rare blockbusters that actually got better as it went along, with a
- [Review: The King](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-king/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly Almost 20 years ago I took off to Memphis by myself and stayed in a motel with a small, guitar-shaped swimming pool. It was across Highway 51 from Graceland. The first thing I did was take the tour at Elvis Presley’s mansion. It seemed natural at the time,
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of June 29](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-june-29/): The new Senses of Cinema features, alongside its other pleasures, a dossier on the giallo and further genre deconstructions of filmmakers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. An interview with Anton Bitel captures the pair’s humor, practicality, and intellectual ambitions (“We had a lot of pleasure when we have watched these movies as an audience, we
- [Review: Leave No Trace](https://parallax-view.org/review-leave-no-trace/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly The first thing that strikes you in Leave No Trace is the density of the Pacific Northwest forest—all that enveloping greenness. People live in these woods, swallowed up by the choking undergrowth. And that’s the way they want it. The movie’s title, usually employed as an anti-littering motto, refers to
- [Review: They Only Kill Their Masters](https://parallax-view.org/review-they-only-kill-their-masters/): [Originally published in Movietone News 21, February 1973] Winning, Red Sky at Morning, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. Each one more atrocious than the one that went before. Which tends to raise the question: how does James Goldstone, the most conspicuously untalented director of the past ten years, get financed (Ernest Lehman of Portnoy's
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of June 24](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-june-24/): Criterion offers three looks at collaborations, fruitful but strained, frustrated by external forces, and consummate. Stephen Prince reflects on screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto’s career, which was stimulated by Kurosawa’s unique method of setting his screenwriters off against one another, though Hashimoto ultimately focused his complicated relationship with Japan’s military history on screenplays for other directors. (“Hashimoto
- [Method, Madness, and Metaphysical Mysteries](https://parallax-view.org/method-madness-and-metaphysical-mysteries/): If you’re reading this you’re one of us. You see the patterns that no one else does. You find the answers to questions too bewildering for others to comprehend. But the deeper you dig, the more confusing things get. And then there are the shady characters who keep weaving through your journey. It's a conspiracy,
- [Review: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom](https://parallax-view.org/review-jurassic-world-fallen-kingdom/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly Twice during Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Bryce Dallas Howard’s character enters a scene with the camera focused on her shoes. Maybe this is the director’s foot fetish, but more likely it’s a comment on one of the criticisms of 2015’s huge-grossing predecessor Jurassic World: that Howard’s character, theme-park corporate lackey
- [Review: Innocent Bystanders](https://parallax-view.org/review-innocent-bystanders/): [Originally published in Movietone News 21, February 1973] The Italian Job got past me but, from what I can tell from descriptions thereof, it set in motion a trend in Peter Collinson's work that is continued in Innocent Bystanders. The potentially portentous title notwithstanding, this latest Collinson takes us far from the significance-laden likes of
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of June 15](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-june-15/): “Snyder and Gray would fold under questioning, ratting on one another, and subsequently go to die in the electric chair at Sing Sing; Tom Howard, a New York Daily News photographer who’d smuggled a camera into the death chamber strapped to his ankle, captured an image of Snyder’s body dancing in the grip of the fatal current.
- [Review: ‘2001’ in 2018](https://parallax-view.org/review-2001-in-2018/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly The greatest movie mind-blower of them all turns 50 this year—a wildly imaginative, influential, psychedelic riddle. But I know what you’re thinking: What about its algorithms? I checked Rotten Tomatoes, and 2001: A Space Odyssey sits with an 89 percent audience score. From critics, it has a comfortable 92 percent
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of June 8](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-june-8/): “How far can a filmmaker push an awkward premise? What situations and complications can be extracted from it? What surprises and transformations can divert the seemingly stable course of the plot? Despite its humble appearance as a minor work made for television, The Man with the Suitcase is not short on answers to these questions. The film
- [Review: American Animals](https://parallax-view.org/review-american-animals/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly Until last weekend, I had a pretty simple opinion of MoviePass. It was obviously insane. The service, which has been hemorrhaging money for months, sounded way too easy: For a low fee, you sign up and see a huge number of movies at participating theaters. How can this be
- [Your 2018 San Francisco Silent Film Festival Preview](https://parallax-view.org/your-2018-san-francisco-silent-film-festival-preview/): "True art transcends time" is the motto of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which opens its twenty-third edition at the historic Castro Theatre on Wednesday, May 30. What began as a one-day event over two decades ago has grown into the largest and most impressive silent film festival in the country. The twenty-three programs
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of May 25](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-may-25/): “At the end of each day, the cast and crew convened at the hotel bar. ‘Everyone would sort of be sitting at different parts of the bar, and she’d walk in and it was, like, Shit! Claire’s here!’ [producer Andrew] Lauren recalled. ‘I saw a lot of people wanting to leave many, many times, but
- [SIFF Diary - Week 1](https://parallax-view.org/siff-diary-week-1/): There was a time when I threw myself into SIFF, seeing 50, 60, sometimes over 70 films between the first days of press screenings and the closing night gala (that's still far short of some passholders who watch over 100 films over the course of the fest). Those days are over for many reasons, not
- [Review: Solo: A Star Wars Story](https://parallax-view.org/review-solo-a-star-wars-story/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle weekly At this point in the movie he’s just Han. But we know he’ll acquire the last name sometime soon. In a tight spot in a galaxy far, far away, Han glances at a billboard-sized recruitment video for the Empire, a laughably macho commercial for future pilots. Beneath the
- [Review: Beast](https://parallax-view.org/review-beast/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly At first it comes on like a grim version of Sixteen Candles: a young, flame-haired woman flees her house after being upstaged at her own birthday party (where her older sister makes a happy announcement, with perfect malicious timing), then gets tipsy at a club and ends up with
- [Women Who Take Revenge](https://parallax-view.org/women-who-take-revenge/): If the revenge movie is a staple of American exploitation cinema, the female revenge film pushes exploitation to extremes. At its most gratuitous it makes a spectacle of sexual assault on a female victim for the gruesome entertainment of a male audience, then celebrates righteous vengeance on the perpetrators with additional spectacle. It's a genre
- [Review: Anon](https://parallax-view.org/review-anon/): Sal Frieland (Clive Owen) strolls down a city street, the anonymous faces in the crowds streaming past him instantly tagged with pop-up IDs. Frieland's a cop in a future where every brain is connected to a central server, his hardwired Google Glass eyeballs giving him access not just to individuals' data but everything they've seen
- [Review: Manhunt](https://parallax-view.org/review-manhunt/): "For a better tomorrow," remarks one character in a rare moment of downtime in John Woo's Manhunt, drawing a direct connection to Woo's 1986 break-out hit. Not that he needed to drop so blatant a callback. Released in 2017 across Asian cinemas but debuting on Netflix in the U.S., Manhunt is a self-conscious throwback to the Hong Kong
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of May 18](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-may-18/): “With its flashback structure, intense low-key lighting, and the rich psychological portraiture of even the smallest characters, Crossfire has the look and depth of a signature ’40s noir, but it’s really a social problem picture in drag—like a Stanley Kramer picture with style or one of those instructively anti-fascist genre films of the era such as Brute Force. Because
- [Review: Deadpool 2](https://parallax-view.org/review-deadpool-2/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly How deep do the pop culture references go in Deadpool 2? Let’s dive. In an early scene, our sardonic titular superhero (Ryan Reynolds) and his very special lady friend Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) are chilling after a long day of crimefighting, watching Yentl on TV, like you do. A few minutes later,
- [SIFFing: Parallax View's SIFF 2018 Guide](https://parallax-view.org/siffing-parallax-view-siff-2018-guide/): [Updated June 7, 2018] The 44th Annual Seattle International Film Festival opens on Thursday, May 17, with the opening night gala presentation of Goya-winning feature The Bookshop with Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, and Bill Nighy from Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet, and closes 24 days later on Sunday, June 10 with Portland-based filmmaker Gus Van Sant's
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of May 11](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-may-11/): New at Criterion, two highly individualized takes on genre that twist the formulas to very much their own thing. Amy Taubin sings the praises of Jarmusch’s “visionary” western Dead Man (“There are several ways to read the narrative that evolves from this setup. [….] It’s irrelevant which interpretation you prefer. Each has its own logic.
- [Review: Tully](https://parallax-view.org/review-tully/): Review by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly Marlo, Charlize Theron’s lead character in Tully, fends off small talk with barrages of acid-dipped put-downs, and dismisses anything sentimental as corny. So you wonder what she would think of her own film, which conceals a tender heart within an outer skin of sandpaper. That’s not a knock; Tully makes hipster
- [Review: The Tree of Wooden Clogs](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-tree-of-wooden-clogs/): [originally presented as a program note for the 1983 University of Washington film series "The Epic Tradition in World Cinema"] "Those who are wretched are nearer to God." A peasant woman speaks that line early in The Tree of Wooden Clogs, by way of chiding two of her numerous children for giggling at the simpleminded
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of May 4](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-april-27/): The latest issue of cléo is dedicated entirely to the maker of its namesake, Agnès Varda. In addition to Kiva Reardon’s interview with the director (“Looking at others is the first step of feminism—not being selfish, not being mirror-oriented. Looking at other people. Discovering what they do to make a living. Or how they behave.”),
- [Summer Movie Preview 2018](https://parallax-view.org/summer-movie-preview-2018/): Preview by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly Deadpool 2 In 2016’s Deadpool—a refreshing whiff of unfiltered R-rated sarcasm—Ryan Reynolds got to merge his tongue-in-cheek image with an antihero character who could break the fourth wall and mock other Marvel Comics franchises. The sequel has—somewhat alarmingly—parted ways with Deadpool director Tim Miller (subbing in Tim Leitch, of the listless AtomicBlonde),
- [SIFF 2018: Stop me before I screen again!](https://parallax-view.org/siff-2018-stop-me-before-i-screen-again/): The 44th Annual Seattle International Film Festival opens on Thursday, May 17, with the opening night gala presentation of Goya-winning feature The Bookshop with Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, and Bill Nighy from Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet. As in previous years, it launches at McCaw Hall and is followed by the opening night party. 24 days
- [Review: Avengers: Infinity War (2)](https://parallax-view.org/review-avengers-infinity-war/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly Young Peter Parker, still a newcomer to his role as Spider-Man, asks his mentor Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) to explain why a villain is pummeling New York. “He’s from space,” says Tony. “He came here to steal a necklace from a wizard.” End of explanation. Back to
- [Review: Avengers: Infinity War (1)](https://parallax-view.org/review-avengers-infinity-war-1/): Reviewed by Andrew Wright for The Stranger So it’s finally here, and it’s goddamned enormous. Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel’s attempt to put an exploding bow on 10 years of corporate synergy, is a lurching, ungainly colossus of a blockbuster, with far too many characters and storylines stretching across a series of planets that resemble 1970s prog-rock
- [Review: Zama](https://parallax-view.org/review-zama/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly A man stands beside a South American river, striking a distinguished pose in his 18th-century Spanish finery. You can guess his thoughts: Aren’t my boots impressive? See how my cocked hat radiates authority? Am I not the picture of a New World conquistador? But the longer we watch the opening
- [Blu-ray: ‘Basket Case,’ ‘Ichi the Killer,’ ‘Macon County’ justice, and ‘The Hidden’ with Kyle Maclachlan](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-basket-case-ichi-the-killer-macon-county-the-hidden/): Basket Case (Arrow, Blu-ray) Ichi the Killer (Well Go, Blu-ray) Macon County Line (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray) The Hidden (Warner Archive, Blu-ray) Basket Case (1982), the debut feature of filmmaker Frank Henenlotter, is a gruesome little cult indie-horror drama of brotherly love and righteous vengeance shot on location in the seedier sections of New York City. Henenlotter was reared on the
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of April 20](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-april-20/): “In the middle of this backstage scene, a typically Chytilován, anarchic outbreak takes place: a rebellious girl refuses to go on stage with a tulle hat that she deems horrible. At the last minute, this black hat will be put on Marta, who wears it without complaining, while her colleague is forbidden to parade. But,
- [Review: You Were Never Really Here](https://parallax-view.org/review-you-were-never-really-here/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly In You Were Never Really Here, Joaquin Phoenix continues his dogged campaign to be our crustiest actor. Nothing tops his disheveled turn as “Joaquin Phoenix” in the similarly titled pseudo-documentary I’m Not Here—ever the gold standard for an actor trashing his own good looks—but Phoenix looks remarkably awful in this
- [Review: Thoroughbreds](https://parallax-view.org/review-thoroughbreds/): "Heathers meets American Psycho" reads the drop quote on the poster of Thoroughbreds, the debut feature from writer/director Cory Finley. It's a tasty little tag and accurate enough, in its way. There's a wicked satire under the cultivated surfaces and carefully groomed front, but a chilly alienation sets this teen-killer thriller apart from the flamboyant films of the
- [Review: Babylon Berlin](https://parallax-view.org/review-babylon-berlin-netflix/): The most expensive German TV series ever produced, Babylon Berlin, is Weimar noir, a detective drama turned conspiracy thriller set against the backdrop of decadence, poverty, and corruption in 1929 Berlin just before the Nazi party rode the swell of nationalism to power. Think Cabaret meets L.A. Confidential as produced by UFA, recreating a cultural moment that is about to
- [Blu-ray: ‘Liquid Sky’ on Vinegar Syndrome](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-liquid-sky-vinegar-syndrome/): Liquid Sky (Vinegar Syndrome, Blu-ray+DVD Combo) An avant-garde artifact straddling the eighties movie underground and the growing American independent movement, Liquid Sky (1982) broke into the college film circuit thanks to a trippy mix of drug culture, sexual androgyny, and indie sci-fi weirdness playing out in the New York eighties bohemian scene. Director Slava Tsukerman was a Russian
- [Review: The People vs. Larry Flynt](https://parallax-view.org/the-people-vs-larry-flynt/): [Originally published on Mr. Showbiz December 20, 1996] From Disraeli and The Life of Emile Zola, through Madame Curie, Lawrence of Arabia, and Funny Girl, to Gandhi and Michael Collins, the biopic has been among Hollywood's most venerated genres — the means of conferring cinematic immortality on history’s superstars and, more often than not, Oscar
- [Amadeus](https://parallax-view.org/amadeus/): [Originally published in The Weekly, September 19, 1984] A dark street; equally dark Panavision screen. Snow falling; offcenter, a street lamp. The cry "Mozart!" and a startling chord of music. Somewhere behind a door in Vienna, a forgotten old man named Antonio Salieri lifts a razor to his throat because, he maintains, many years ago
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of April 13](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-april-13/): “Stahl had a style of impressive gravity that could make a melodrama serious even for those disinclined to the genre (this shows especially in the great first version of Back Street, 1932), but the full effect of melodrama as Sirk conceives it derives from a constant contrast of tones: strong effects, vivid and sometimes audacious, alternating
- [Review: Rogers Park](https://parallax-view.org/review-rogers-park/): Reviewed by Andrew Wright for The Stranger The smaller the scale of a portrait, the more the individual brush strokes tend to matter. The finely tuned relationship drama Rogers Park successfully captures a compelling slice of life where there are no clear-cut heroes or villains, just normal everyday folks with some recognizably unlovely facets to their personalities.
- [Review: Submergence](https://parallax-view.org/review-submergence/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly I interviewed director Wim Wenders in the mid-’90s, and a sizable part of the conversation focused on an element of filmmaking he found supremely important: the sense of place. One can’t just parachute in somewhere and shoot a film; you need to know a location and understand it.
- [Blu-ray: Dario Argento's ‘Suspira,’ ‘Cat O’ Nine Tails,’ ‘Deep Red,’ ‘Opera,’ and ‘The Church’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-dario-argentos-suspira-cat-o-nine-tails-deep-red-opera-and-the-church/): Suspiria (Synapse, Blu-ray) The Cat O’ Nine Tails (Arrow, Blu-ray+DVD Combo) Deep Red (Arrow, Blu-ray) Opera (Scorpion, Blu-ray) The Church (Scorpion, Blu-ray) Dario Argento was the master choreographer of the distinctly Italian art of horror known as giallo, was a baroque, often sadistic kind of slasher movie that favors intricately-designed murder sequences and aesthetic beauty over logic. Call him the
- [Quality up the Wazoo: 'Hill Street Blues'](https://parallax-view.org/quality-up-the-wazoo-hill-street-blues/): [Originally published in Film Comment, March-April 1981] If my editor hadn't called my attention to it, the premiere episode of Hill Street Blues would very probably have come and gone without my notice. Hundreds of television series have. But he knew I liked Lou Grant, and this show "from the producers of Lou Grant" (the
- [Review: A Quiet Place](https://parallax-view.org/review-a-quiet-place/): The horror films that linger into the wee small hours after watching are often the simplest ones. A Quiet Place, director/co-writer/actor John Krasinski’s startlingly good monster movie, quickly establishes a lean, mean scenario and then cranks up the tension. This is a ruthlessly efficient primal scream generator that somehow doesn’t leave the viewer feeling ill-used, and
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of April 6](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-april-6/): “The stories also share common thematic concerns, regarding jealousy, marital fidelity, interpersonal power dynamics, and shifting loyalties across triangular relationships – often there is a Charles and a Hélène (Audran played four different Hélènes), whose relationship is disrupted by a complicating Paul. Bourgeoisie rituals come under anthropological interrogation; domestic geography is surgically precise (dwellings, simple
- [Blu-ray: A pair of ‘Ringo’s and ‘A Fistful of Dynamite’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-ringo-a-fistful-of-dynamite/): A Pistol for Ringo/The Return of Ringo: Two Films by Dessario Tessari (Arrow, Blu-ray) A Fistful of Dynamite (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray) Duccio Tessari is not one of the directors known for spaghetti westerns. In fact, he only directed two in his long and successful career, both with Giuliano Gemma (billed as Montgomery Wood) playing against the mercenary
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of March 30](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-march-30/): “When Haddish was 13, she and her siblings were placed in foster care; she spent almost two years living in group homes and with foster families until her grandmother gained custody of the kids. Money remained tight, so they technically remained in the foster-care system (hence the taxes line [in her standup]). When her foster-care
- [Review: They Remain](https://parallax-view.org/review-they-remain/): Flip through a few recent Best of Horror collections at random, and you’re likely to hit a healthy smattering of Laird Barron. Barron, who sets many of his stories in the Northwest, is a ferocious talent, specializing in an upsetting, lysergic melding of two-fisted adventure scenarios and slithering Lovecraftian remnants. They Remain, the first filmed take
- [Review: Isle of Dogs](https://parallax-view.org/review-isle-of-dogs/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Wes Anderson returns to the world of stop-motion animation with his latest feature, Isle of Dogs. If you’re familiar with Anderson’s rigidly arranged chocolate-box technique, you can guess why animation appeals to him. For starters, it allows total control over the image,
- [Blu-ray: Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Age of Innocence’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-martin-scorsese-age-of-innocence/): The Age of Innocence (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD) The Age of Innocence (1993) is not the only costume drama or historical picture that Martin Scorsese made but it is his only classical literary adaptation from the filmmaker that, all these years later, we still remember for edgy violence and cinematic energy. But even from the director of The Last
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of March 23](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-march-23/): “The starkness of Varda’s words contrasts greatly with the received wisdom that her films are serene, humanistic, and life-affirming. In an interview with Varda in Sight & Sound, Chris Darke used the word “lightness” to describe her style, but Varda disagreed: in her estimation, “lightness” tends to mean “don’t make things sad.” “Fluidity” is Varda’s own
- [Review: Love, Simon](https://parallax-view.org/review-love-simon/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly Early in Love, Simon, the hero jokes about getting together with friends and watching bad ’90s teen movies—the real joke being that Love, Simon essentially is a ’90s teen movie … with a few tweaks. Already acclaimed for being the first wide multiplex release with a gay high-schooler as its protagonist, Love, Simon dutifully follows
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of March 16](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-march-16/): “Some set-ups and movements of Passeio com Johnny Guitar are built as the reversed mirror reflection of those envisaged by Ray. The more one watches Monteiro’s short, the more one appreciates its evocation of Ray’s mise en scène. But this evocation is not a copy, an imitation, or a reproduction. He follows the pulsations of the scene
- [Review: The Death of Stalin](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-death-of-stalin/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly If satire doesn’t draw blood, what’s the point? For years that was the problem with Saturday Night Live, which tended to make its political caricatures into lovable clods, figures of fun rather than fury. (Things have been more barbed around there lately.) In Britain, there’s a long tradition of
- [Silents Please: Lois Weber restored and ‘The Covered Wagon’ on Blu-ray](https://parallax-view.org/silents-please-lois-weber-restored-and-the-covered-wagon-on-blu-ray/): Shoes (Milestone, Blu-ray, DVD) The Dumb Girl of Portici (Milestone, Blu-ray, DVD) The Covered Wagon (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD) Lois Weber holds a place in film history as the first major woman film director in Hollywood. What’s often forgotten in that honor is the talent that gave her a successful 25 year making films for the major studios.
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of March 9](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-march-9/): “Inspired by theoreticians such as the Jamaica-born, UK-based public intellectual Stuart Hall and the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci as much as by avant-garde filmmakers Dziga Vertov and Derek Jarman, BAFC’s work blended cascading montage and complex sonic experimentation with personal reflections on race, memory, post-colony and migration, with the rigorous yet non-didactic interrogation of official,
- [Review: Submission](https://parallax-view.org/review-submission/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly In Submission, Stanley Tucci has this little chuckle he deploys in a variety of situations. He plays a creative-writing professor at a second-rank college, and his automatic laugh comes in handy when placating inquisitive students, attending faculty parties with pedantic colleagues, or shrugging off incessant questions about when he’s
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of March 2](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-march-2/): “What I knew of love had always stemmed from desire, from the wish to be altered or thrown off course by some uncontrollable force. But in my love for Ershadi I nearly didn’t exist beyond that great feeling. To call it compassion makes it sound like a form of divine love, and it wasn’t that;
- [Review: The Party](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-party-sally-potter/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly As we applaud the wave of women making (still far from equitable) inroads into film directing, let’s pause to appreciate a veteran in the field. Primarily a choreographer, songwriter, and performance artist in the early part of her career, Sally Potter began making experimental films in the 1960s.
- [An American in King Henry's Court: Orson Welles' 'Chimes at Midnight'](https://parallax-view.org/american-in-king-henrys-court-orson-welles-chimes-at-midnight/): Originally published in Linguaculture, Volume 8, Number 2, 2017 Orson Welles, a boy from Kenosha, Wisconsin, was one of the most audacious Shakespearians who ever lived. He recited soliloquies as a child, wrote a book on the plays as a teenager, and at age 17 roamed across Ireland before brazenly (and successfully) presenting himself at the
- [Review: Half Magic](https://parallax-view.org/review-half-magic/): Reviewed by Andrew Wright for The Stranger As the stories of real-life Hollywood Ogres continue to pile up, the perspectives of women who’ve navigated the trenches are especially welcome. Half Magic, Heather Graham’s feature debut as a writer/director, is a witty, agreeably low-key comedy about Finding Yourself that benefits from a keen sense of irony about
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of February 23](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-february-23/): New at Criterion, a pair of films that inhabit their genres even as they transcend them. Michael Sragow illuminates the many flights of poetry and politics that Ichikawa infused in his studio-mandated remake of An Actor’s Revenge. (“What Yukinojo brings down on his foes really is an actor’s revenge, dizzyingly dramatic in its form, surgically perceptive in
- [Review: A Fantastic Woman](https://parallax-view.org/review-fantastic-woman/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly At one point in her stressful week, Marina (Daniela Vega) encounters a stiff wind while walking along a Santiago sidewalk. She stops for a moment, planting her high heels against the ground and leaning forward into the current—and then she just keeps tilting, to a degree not possible
- [Review: Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool](https://parallax-view.org/review-film-stars-dont-die/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly Gloria Grahame might well have been concocted in a lab experiment to create a classic Hollywood star. She had not only the looks and talent, but also the haunted arc of a screen goddess: early success, an Oscar (1952 Best Supporting Actress for The Bad and the Beautiful), a
- [Blu-ray: ‘Your Name,’ ‘Napping Princess,’ ‘In This Corner of the World’ from Japan](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-name-napping-princess-corner-world-japan/): Your Name. (Funimation, Blu-ray, DVD) Napping Princess (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray, DVD) In This Corner of the World (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray, DVD) Japanese animator and filmmaker Makoto Shinkai turns his own young adult novel into Your Name. (Japan, 2016), an animated feature that brings a fresh approach to the classic comic situation of body swapping. In this story two high school
- [Blu-ray: ‘Tierra,’ ‘Vacas,’ ‘Red Squirrel’ – Three by Julio Medem](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-tierra-vacas-red-squirrel-three-julio-medem/): Vacas (Olive Films, Blu-ray, DVD) Red Squirrel (Olive Films, Blu-ray, DVD) Tierra (Olive Films, Blu-ray, DVD) The vivid and lush films of Spain’s Julio Medem are as much about his country’s distinctive landscapes and natural wonders as they are about the restless and obsessive characters that wander through his world. Lovers of the Arctic Circle (1998) and Sex and Lucia (2001) established
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of February 16](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-february-16/): “The paradox, of course, was that while ripping itself free from genre conventions, Night of the Living Dead inadvertently established a new genre of its own. While refusing explanations and rationales in the face of real-world horrors, it helped open the way (with the contemporaneous Rosemary’s Baby) for the curious convergence of conspiracy theories and demonism in seventies
- [Review: Black Panther](https://parallax-view.org/review-black-panther/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly In 2017, the Marvel comic book conglomerate took a wackadoodle turn that coughed up two of its most fluid, playful movies yet: the sprightly Spider-Man: Homecoming and the irreverent Thor: Ragnarok. Those films suggested how frisky space might be carved out within the crushing sameness of the superhero formula and the larger
- [Blu-ray: ‘Night of the Living Dead’ at 50](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-night-living-dead-50/): Night of the Living Dead (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD) Fifty years ago, commercial filmmaker George Romero marshalled the resources of his production company Latent Image and the talents of friends and colleagues to produce a low budget feature film in Pittsburg, PA. The rest is, as they say, history. Night of the Living Dead (1968) is the first genuinely
- [Blu-ray: G.W. Pabst’s ‘Westfront 1918’ and ‘Kameradschaft’ on Criterion](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-g-w-pabsts-westfront-1918-kameradschaft-criterion/): Westfront 1918 (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD) Kameradschaft (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD) Georg Wilhelm Pabst was not only one of the great German directors of the silent film era, he (along with Fritz Lang) explored the expressive possibilities of sound in the early days of sound cinema. Criterion presents two of his earliest sound features, a pair that make perfect
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of February 9](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-february-9/): The new issue of La Furia Umana contains an extensive dossier on Godard. There’s always the hazard of writing on Godard aping the form-breaking style of its subject without his poetry, and this collection is no exception. But there are highlights, including Rick Warner’s analysis of the director’s love of tennis and his rejection of
- [Review: The Insult](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-insult/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly The most surprising inclusion among this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominees was The Insult (L’insulte), a Lebanese drama. It nabbed a slot over the highly touted German film In the Fade, which earned Diane Kruger the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, and edged out critical favorites
- [Moments Out of Time 2017](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-2017/): Images, lines, gestures, moods from the year's films * Dunkirk: lapping of leaflets as they fall in quiet street of a seaside town... * Imperceptible bleed of newsreel and movie, Detroit... * Post-first-kiss, Christine’s (Saoirse Ronan’s) milestone-marking scream in middle of suburban street, Lady Bird... * Bobby (Willem Dafoe) fires up a cigarette; lights come
- [Blu-ray: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-professor-marston-wonder-women/): Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017) is not your usual comic superhero origin story. It turns out that the majestic Amazon princess from a mythic island of female warriors was born of a Harvard psychologist and outspoken feminist who had a polyamorous relationship with two women who inspired the character and a passion for sexual
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of February 2](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-february-2/): “The fragile nature of the Trucolor takes things even further, with the light subtly shifting from red to blue over single shots, creating a hallucinatory otherworldly effect that deepens every Bill Elliott plea, Bible in hand. The movie often looks more like a watercolor painting than a film, especially as characters move in and out
- [Blu-ray: Chasing the Dragon](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-chasing-dragon/): Chasing the Dragon (Well Go) Directed by the insanely prolific Hong Kong action veteran Wong Jing, Chasing the Dragon (China, 2017) is the filmmaker’s crime epic, a historical drama that charts the rise and fall of two notorious gangsters who thrived in the rampant corruption enabled by Britain’s colonial rule of Hong Kong in the 1960s. The title
- [DVD: ‘Claude Autant-Lara: Four Romantic Escapes from Occupied France’ on Eclipse](https://parallax-view.org/dvd-claude-autant-lara-four-romantic-escapes-occupied-france-eclipse/): Claude Autant-Lara: Four Romantic Escapes from Occupied France (Eclipse, DVD) Confession time: I had never seen a film by French director Claude Autant-Lara before this set and frankly had no concept of his reputation beyond the distaste that the critics-turned-filmmakers of the La Nouvelle Vague held for his work. He was the tradition of quality that
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of January 26](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-january-26/): James Quandt offers an alphabet of Robert Mitchum arcana, from Auteurs to Zanuck, Darryl F., with stops along the way of course for Booze, Eyes, Laughton, and Urine. (“Mitchum pissed not only on script ideas and Kirk Douglas’ reputation, but also on David O. Selznick’s office carpet, a doorway in Paris, the eternal flame in
- [Review: Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey](https://parallax-view.org/review-dirtbag-legend-fred-beckey/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly Even as an octogenarian, Fred Beckey tried to climb mountains along routes nobody had mastered. We’re not speaking metaphorically here: Beckey—one of America’s most proficient climbers and a fixture in the Pacific Northwest mountaineering scene—continued to lug his gear up precipitous inclines when he was in his late
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of January 19](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-january-19/): “My appreciation for his inspiring and innovative cinema grows deeper as the years go by. He had a unique vision in his films and in his artwork, that was deceptively simple yet hard to copy, like that of Parajanov. He always stayed true to himself, to his creative impulses, striving to fulfill his own artistic
- [Review: The Final Year](https://parallax-view.org/review-final-year/): Reviewed by Robert Horton for Seattle Weekly High on my list of “moviemaking don’ts” is the use of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” Nothing against the song, it’s a true anthem by the Nobel laureate with 1963-penned lyrics that remain applicable to any era. But plop it in a movie and heavy-handedness abounds
- [Blu-ray: Blade Runner 2049](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-blade-runner-2049/): 35 years after the original Blade Runner changed the landscape of big screen science fiction, Blade Runner 2049 (2017) dared build on the dystopian portrait of the ecologically devastated urban imaged on screen by director Ridley Scott and his team of designers and artists. Just as in the original, this film is as much about the texture of the
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of January 12](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-january-5/): “Before her husband goes to the leaves to the theater, Madame fixes his shirt; afterward, her hand slides, naturally and forcefully, toward the piano. Her reflex gesture will be punished: he locks up the piano case, preventing her from playing. As always, every affirmation of her self is crushed by her husband. The film’s drama
- [Review: Phantom Thread](https://parallax-view.org/review-phantom-thread/): The main character in Phantom Thread is a 1950s fashion designer named Reynolds Woodcock, a meticulous craftsman and a godlike giant of his industry. Early in the film he prepares for the day’s work, and you know he’s enacting the same rituals he does every morning: the careful brushing of hair, the measured buttering of toast. It’s
- [Review: Paddington 2](https://parallax-view.org/review-paddington-2/): If marmalade sandwiches are back on the menu, it can only mean the Paddington sequel has arrived. The 2014 original, a live-action film with a computer-generated bear, was as warm ‘n fuzzy as its main character. If the sequel has a few odd ideas—Paddington spends almost half the movie in jail?—it still supplies a happy
- [Parallax View's Best of 2017](https://parallax-view.org/parallax-views-best-2017/): Welcome 2018 with one last look back at the best releases of 2017, as seen by the Parallax View contributors and friends and a few special invitations. (In reverse alphabetical order, just so you don't have to see your intrepid managing editor at the top of the list every single year.) Andrew Wright 1. War
- [Review: I, Tonya](https://parallax-view.org/review-i-tonya/): Surely Tonya Harding was one of the last great pre-internet tabloid sensations, an unlikely headliner in a tacky saga of criminal intentions and bad taste. Before the internet, a jaw-dropping scandal like Harding’s could linger for a while, instead of being instantly elbowed aside by Twitter outrage or the latest meme. The drama unfolded in
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of December 22](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-december-22/): The new issue of feminist film journal cléo has dropped, built around the theme of “hot”. Among other pleasures, Kathleen Kampeas-Rittenhouse shows the bleak political view that undergirds Ceyda Torun’s Kedi (“And so perhaps the more-or-less explicit themes of interdependence and fragility woven in among Kedi’s lighter-hearted narratives are an attempt to apply a loving
- [The Movies That Mattered in 2017](https://parallax-view.org/movies-mattered-2017/): The new Star Wars movie opened a few days ago. It will make a mint. But within hours of its opening, it also made waves. Before the end credits had finished rolling, an army of devoted Star Wars faithful had taken to their devices to declare that The Last Jedi was a disgrace to the memory of the doctrinal
- [Review: Darkest Hour](https://parallax-view.org/review-darkest-hour/): So you know all the stuff that was going on offscreen during Dunkirk? That’s centerstage in Darkest Hour, a historical drama that observes British higher-ups during a decisive moment in 1940. Most especially, it focuses on Winston Churchill, who had been Prime Minister less than a month when the evacuation of Dunkirk was executed. But that unlikely
- [Review: Downsizing](https://parallax-view.org/review-downsizing/): Alexander Payne has become known for directing bittersweet comedies rooted in recognizable—you might say warts and all—humanity. Movies like Nebraska, About Schmidt, and Sideways are not always easy on their characters, but they sometimes crackle with lightning bolts of insight. Payne’s latest, written with his frequent writing partner Jim Taylor, adds a sci-fi framing device to his work. But
- [Review: Call Me by Your Name](https://parallax-view.org/review-call-name/): Since it premiered at film festivals earlier this year, Call Me by Your Name has inspired reviews that sound as though they were written in mid-swoon. Frankly, the movie itself encourages this: It’s a lush wallow at an Italian villa, a coming-of-age story that presents sensual adventure and a warm portrait of a functional family. Everything’s ideal,
- [Blu-ray: ‘Fritz Lang: The Silent Films’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-fritz-lang-silent-films/): Fritz Lang: The Silent Films (Kino Classics, Blu-ray) Fritz Lang was a towering giant of silent cinema, legendary for his ambitious, epic scope and the imagination and grandeur of his visual storytelling. Kino has been releasing glorious new editions of his silent films as restored by The Murnau Institute in Germany for years: eleven silent features
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of December 15](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-december-15/): “Now that professional opportunities have expanded and marriage has lost both its inviolability and its exclusivity, what are we to make of Lisa Berndle and of a love at once heroic and wildly destructive, even delusional? One of the marks of a great film is how it changes over time as social context and you,
- [Review: Star Wars: The Last Jedi](https://parallax-view.org/review-star-wars-the-last-jedi/): Nostalgia can only get you so far, even when wookiees are involved. While 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens succeeded in its designated task of rescuing the venerable franchise from the doldrums of its prequels, it also practiced a frustrating form of risk aversion, putting the next generation of characters through some very familiar paces. (Now coming up on
- [Review: On the Beach at Night Alone](https://parallax-view.org/review-beach-night-alone/): One thing to like about the films of the prolific South Korean director Hong Sang-soo is how grounded they are in cluttered, everyday reality. (Maybe your reality isn’t cluttered, but I’m working with what I see around me, so this looks to me like realism.) People in his movies are always going for soup and
- [Blu-ray: ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ – Olive Signature Edition](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-letter-unknown-woman-olive-signature-edition/): Letter from an Unknown Woman (Olive Signature, Blu-ray) (1948), the second Hollywood film by European émigré Max Ophüls (who was credited as Opuls on his American movies), is his first American masterpiece, an exquisitely stylish romantic melodrama (based on a novel by Stefan Zweig) informed by his continental sensibility. “By the time you read this letter,
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of December 8](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-december-8/): The new issue of The Cine-Files contains a dossier on the rewards, surprises, and occasional hazards of teaching film studies. Among others, Joshua Glick discusses how he makes his students place themselves amidst the masses of Vidor’s The Crowd (“Yes, John and Mary are back together and some form of economic stability might be possible.
- [Review: Wonder Wheel](https://parallax-view.org/review-wonder-wheel/): There are a handful of dialogue-free moments in Wonder Wheel, and they come as an enormous relief. Woody Allen’s talky drama—the 48th feature for the 82-year-old director—has a small group of characters yammering at each other for much of its 101 minutes. But there are a couple of times when the central figure, Ginny (Kate Winslet),
- [Blu-ray: ‘Alfred Hitchcock: The Ultimate Collection’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-alfred-hitchcock-ultimate-collection/): Alfred Hitchcock: The Ultimate Collection (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, Blu-ray) – The box set of 15 Alfred Hitchcock pictures made between 1942 and 1976 (featuring films from Paramount, Warner Bros, and MGM as well as Universal Studios) expands on the 2012 Blu-ray box set Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection with two bonus DVDs highlighting Hitchcock’s work on the
- [Review: Steelyard Blues](https://parallax-view.org/review-steelyard-blues/): [Originally published in Movietone News 22, April 1973] Steelyard Blues has occasioned the most dramatic instance of critical backlash in recent memory. Reviewers of contrary political persuasions (to the extent that political bent can be determined from film reviews) have proved to be up to here with the agitprop antics of Jane Fonda and, perhaps,
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of December 1](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-december-1/): “Each in his way, Flaherty and Rouch were devoted to enlarging the cast of filmable humanity by concentrating on non-Western individuals. It might have been more honest for them to present their subjects as actors, which is in a sense what Rouch did. The nonprofessionals in his work give coached performances that effectively reframe the
- [Review: Thelma](https://parallax-view.org/review-thelma/): There’s a fine line between paying homage to classic horror-movie conventions and outright theft. Let’s take a checklist to Joachim Trier’s Thelma, a kind of Carrie re-imagined through a Scandinavian lens. Bird flying fatally into a window? Check. Dream about a snake slithering through the grass? Check. Spooky old photographs of weird people? You bet. These devices can
- [Review: Jane](https://parallax-view.org/review-jane-goodall/): If it seems as though Jane Goodall has always been out there, doing her thing with chimpanzees, she pretty much has: Since 1960, she has been either in Africa studying apes or traveling the world talking about them. She’s like a lighthouse that’s constantly on, even if you’re not always thinking about it. Famous for
- [Review: Sounder](https://parallax-view.org/review-sounder/): [Originally published in Movietone News 22, April 1973] Nice. Safe. Inoffensive. These words adequately characterize Sounder and confirm the precise, if surely unintentional, irony of its pitch: "If you are the sort of person who sees only one movie each year, Sounder is the movie you should see this year." Sounder has little to do
- [Review: The Breadwinner](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-breadwinner/): When The Secret of Kells opened in 2010 it garnered respectful-to-gushing reviews and snagged an Oscar nomination in the animated feature category—a neat trick for a film from a small Irish production company, Cartoon Saloon. I liked the film too, and applauded its ambitious visual design. Still, one thing nagged a little: the suspicion, present in every
- [Silents Please: the original 1925 ‘The Lost World’ and Murnau’s ‘The Last Laugh’ on Blu-ray](https://parallax-view.org/original-1925-lost-world-murnau-last-laugh-blu-ray/): Two silent movie classics come to Blu-ray in new, restored editions. The Lost World (Flicker Alley, Blu-ray) The Last Laugh (Kino Classics, Blu-ray, DVD) Every larger than life creature feature, from King Kong to Godzilla to Jurassic Park owes a debt to the original The Lost World (1925), the granddaddy of giant monster movies. Based on an adventure fantasy by Arthur Conan Doyle, it’s the
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of November 17](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-november-17/): “Camille Paglia is not the only one to observe that the great movie stars – of any era – are those with androgynous characteristics. The same could be said for literary characters (people always seem to forget the cross-dressing incident with Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre), for art, for architecture. Not so much yin-yang, but a
- [Review: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri](https://parallax-view.org/review-three-billboards-outside-ebbing-missouri/): Great movie dialogue is at its funniest when you can quote a line that brings down the house but won’t mean a thing out of context. For instance, in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Peter Dinklage utters these words in the middle of a dinner conversation: “Penelope said ‘begets’?” Not funny out of context, but in
- [Blu-ray: Into the Night](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-night/): Into the Night (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray) After the 1970s recast film noir in shades of nostalgia (Chinatown, 1974, The Late Show, 1977) and private eye revisionism and cynicism (The Long Goodbye, 1973, Night Moves, 1975), the eighties gave it a burst of color and energy with Neon Noir. John Landis’s Into the Night (1985) doesn’t have the self-consciously chiaroscuro lighting
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of November 10](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-november-10/): “Every genuine act of innovation starts with a bit of destruction. However, it’s not the medium that Lynch blows up, but the rules and conventions associated with it. He has done this many times throughout his career: with the aesthetics of analogue film and low definition cameras, with serialized narratives, and compact (even ultra-short) durations.
- [Review: The Square](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-square/): I once interviewed filmmaker Steven Soderbergh on stage in front of an audience that included one person who occasionally made canine barking sounds that resounded through the hall. This was only mildly distracting, and if it were a person with Tourette’s Syndrome or something, I’m glad he came and took in the event. It did
- [Review: Murder on the Orient Express](https://parallax-view.org/review-murder-orient-express-2017/): Kenneth Branagh brandishes an improbable mustache and suspicious accent in Murder on the Orient Express, but I have no interest in mockery. Surely one reason—not the most exalted reason, maybe, but a reason—to go to the movies is to relish the spectacle of an actor battling outlandish tricks of the trade and making them fun. Branagh
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of November 3](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-november-3/): “War changed Jean-Pierre Grumbach into Melville, basically took from him even his birth name, his innocence, confirming him blocklike under his patronym, a solid character with a studied set of accoutrements, an impassable mask. The fighting, the atrocities, painted his reality gray, erased the idiotic border between good and evil, set him down firmly in
- [Review: Wonderstruck](https://parallax-view.org/review-wonderstruck/): Todd Haynes has been in the zone for quite some time now, creating a remarkable streak of films that establish glorious illusions, and then burrow deeper for the real, messy deal. Wonderstruck, the director’s first movie for a younger audience, feels like an anomaly in other, less intriguing ways—including an atypically slack narrative and an occasional
- [Review: Thor: Ragnarok](https://parallax-view.org/review-thor-ragnarok/): In every sense, Thor needed a haircut. The Marvel movie universe—which, like the real universe, is pitiless and has no end—featured this character to passable effect in its Avengers movies and with lesser results in Thor’s starring vehicles. Something had to change, especially since a very funny actor, Chris Hemsworth, was visibly hamstrung by the
- [Review: God’s Own Country](https://parallax-view.org/review-gods-country/): You’ve got to hand it to a movie that introduces its main character as aggressively unpleasant right from the start. We might suspect that redemption will come, but the prospect of spending a lot of time with an obnoxious protagonist can be dispiriting when you’re just sitting down to a night at the movies. Such
- [Blu-ray: James Whale’s ‘The Old Dark House’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-james-whale-old-dark-house/): James Whale followed up his iconic horror classic Frankenstein (1931) with the strange, sly, and sardonic The Old Dark House (1932), part haunted house terror and part spoof executed with baroque style. Boris Karloff (fresh from his star-making turn in Frankenstein) takes top billing in the supporting role of Morgan, the scarred, mute butler with a penchant for drink and
- [Blu-ray: Mario Bava's ‘Kill, Baby… Kill!’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-mario-bava-kill-baby-kill/): The title may sound like a serial killer thriller but Mario Bava’s Kill, Baby… Kill (Italy, 1966) is a Gothic ghost story with haunting images, grotesque edges, and glorious style. Think of it as Bava’s answer to a Hammer horror, with hysterical superstition and suspicion of outsiders replacing the lurid sexuality of Hammer’s Victorian horrors and Bava’s
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of October 27](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-october-27/): At TIFF’s blog, a paean to the iconic crafter of movie gimmicks and a look at how little a master filmmaker can get away with showing you. Craig Caron, like most writers on the subject, can’t conceal his giddiness recounting the career of William Castle, whose mix of shameless stunts and B-movie energy maintain a
- [Review: Goodbye Christopher Robin](https://parallax-view.org/review-goodbye-christopher-robin/): Over the years the rights to Winnie-the-Pooh have been acquired by Disney, so the muscle of the world’s savviest media corporation stands behind the winsome cartoon bear. If that doesn’t already seem like a mismatch, it will after you see Goodbye Christopher Robin, a British film about the origins of Pooh. This gentle movie examines what
- [Review: Human Flow](https://parallax-view.org/review-human-flow/): Human Flow is not a documentary by a journalist, or a traditional activist. If it were, it might be 25 hours long, with abundant background on the history of the world’s current refugee disasters and a guidebook on how these terrible problems—the worst since the end of World War II, with 65 million people displaced—can be
- [Review: Save the Tiger](https://parallax-view.org/review-save-the-tiger/): [Originally published in Movietone News 22, April 1973] Save the Tiger is the sort of film that can give a well-intentioned film teacher nightmares. It's so easy to imagine an equally well-intentioned, beginning student turning in a scene-by-scene breakdown of the narrative that faultlessly demonstrates as serious a thematic—indeed, didactic—purpose and as constant and consistent
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of October 20](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-october-20/): The New York Times Magazine offers a pair of profiles that emerge more complementary than you might expect. Alexander Chee finds Park Chan-wook committed to his modest domesticity, as fond of photographs and cats as Chris Marker, and proud of his self-taught sense of filmmaking. (“When you say you go to a film school in
- [Review: Loving Vincent](https://parallax-view.org/review-loving-vincent/): Vincent Van Gogh’s life has been fodder for many movies, and it’s easy to understand the appeal: The painter embodies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist, and the subject offers meaty visual possibilities. Plus, the drama! How many biopics build to a scene where the hero slices off part of his own ear? Not
- [Blu-ray: Spider-Man: Homecoming](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-spider-man-homecoming/): Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) is the second reboot of the first superstar of the 21st century superhero boom since Sam Raimi’s hit trilogy and this time Sony (who still owns the movie rights) has handed the creative reins over to Marvel Studios and allowed them to integrate the webslinger into the Marvel Comics Movie Universe. Tom Holland actually
- [Review: The Train Robbers](https://parallax-view.org/review-train-robbers/): [Originally published in Movietone News 22, April 1973] Burt Kennedy is one of those fitfully interesting but dreadfully unreliable minor talents whose films are saved—when they are saved—by (frequently unassimilated) quirks in his style and treatment. Hannie Caulder, that bizarre European-based western of last year, included a wealth of outrageousness that seemed to presage a
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of October 13](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-october-13/): The new issue of Screening the Past, as always, features some interesting articles about the history of Australian film, including Dirk de Bruyn’s praise of the sparse, often years in the making works of experimental filmmaker Lynsey Martin (“That Light and Dark was initiated in 1973 and completed 25 years later defines and overwhelms this
- [Review: Lucky](https://parallax-view.org/review-lucky/): Every character actor should get a send-off like Lucky. But then not every character actor is Harry Dean Stanton. In recent years, Stanton, who died on Sept. 15 at 91, became almost as well known for his charismatic offscreen personality as for his decades of work in film (usually as an arresting supporting player, occasionally as
- [Blu-ray: ‘Vampyr’ on Criterion](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-vampyr-criterion/): An early sound film shot with a distinctive and evocative silent film aesthetic, Vampyr (Denmark, 1932) is a horror movie as tone poem. Dialogue is sparse and large blocks of text (either intertitles or pages from a book of vampire lore) provide the exposition. It’s an eerily abstract film of vague motivations and ethereal imagery (exaggerated by
- [Review: The Ruling Class](https://parallax-view.org/review-ruling-class/): [Originally published in Movietone News 22, April 1973] Any movie that runs two-and-one-half-hours-plus yet doesn't have one glancing at his watch has to have something going for it. And The Ruling Class does, as long as deep thoughts about the medium don't enter into it. The medium gets kicked about as freely as most other
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of October 6](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-october-6/): “A Girl’s Own Story stands out for the concrete stylistic choices elaborated in each scene, but also owes much to an overall tone: passionless, desolate. This atmosphere is soaked in the experience of a world that is too small and gives too little, a world filled with boring rituals and sickening family dynamics. Costume, décor, and
- [Review: Ex Libris: New York Public Library](https://parallax-view.org/review-ex-libris/): No documentary is objective. Even when a nonfiction film lacks narration, a storyline, or Michael Moore, someone has to decide what to leave in and what to leave out. That’s what any kind of art is: deciding what to leave in and what to leave out. The particular art of the fly-on-the-wall documentary has been
- [Review: The Heartbreak Kid](https://parallax-view.org/review-heartbreak-kid/): [Originally published in Movietone News 22, April 1973] It's possible to see The Heartbreak Kid as a kind of funhouse mirror reflecting the foibles and delusions we all share to some extent. A glance into such a mirror may provoke healthy, rejuvenating laughter or the kind of wearily hip sniggering which passes, in some circles,
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of September 29](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-september-29/): Some giants of the experimental film scene receive attention at BOMB magazine. First, a reprint of a letter Stan Brakhage wrote to poet Robert Kelly about the inspiration and trying process of creating Mothlight shows the filmmaker’s literary style almost as dazzlingly abrupt as his cinematic. (“I began thinking that Mothlight must begin with the
- [Review: American Made](https://parallax-view.org/review-american-made/): American Made doesn’t entirely stand on its own as a movie, but it provides some kick for two reasons. One is the project’s based-on-fact nature: Its cavalcade of unlikely encounters and officially sanctioned malfeasance—peopled by a cast of historical figures that includes future jailbirds Oliver North and Manuel Noriega and future president George W. Bush—is truly
- [Blu-ray: French classics ‘The Love of a Woman’ and ‘Spotlight on a Murderer’ from Arrow](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-love-woman-spotlight-murderer-arrow/): Jean Grémillon was one of the great French film directors of the golden age with a career that spanned from the end of the silent era through the late 1950s, but is one of the least known to American audiences and very few of his films are available in the U.S. (in fact, the only
- [Review: Friend Request](https://parallax-view.org/review-friend-request/): Friend Request is all about the dangers of Facebook and social media, so maybe it could have gotten a pass in 2011. The alarm—which has nothing to do with Facebook’s controversial algorithms or alleged biases—seems a little outdated now. Do college students still use Facebook? If so, they will find the sorts of lessons here that
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of September 22](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-september-22/): A pair of fine memorials remind us what a unique presence we lost with the passing of Harry Dean Stanton. Drew Fortune rounds up a baker’s dozen of friends, collaborators, and fellow barflies to share memories of a flinty buddha who wouldn’t hesitate to cut you down to size even as he remained your boon
- [Blu-ray: Wonder Woman](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-wonder-woman/): Wonder Woman (2017) is, if you’ll pardon such an obvious comment, a wonder of a superhero movie, a film that doesn’t transcend the genre but most certainly sets a high bar, especially next to the ponderous, humorless films of the new big screen universe of interconnected DC Comics heroes. Gal Gadot debuted as Amazon princess warrior
- [Review: Paris, Texas](https://parallax-view.org/review-paris-texas/): [Originally published in The Weekly, December 19, 1984] In John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln, a film employed to throw a cultural frame around Wim Wenders's Alice in the Cities, a character says to Abe, "Never saw a man look at a river the way you do." No filmmaker has ever looked at a road the
- [Blu-ray: ‘E.T.’ at 35 from Universal](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-e-t-35-universal/): E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Steven Spielberg’s suburban fairy tale for kids who think they are too hip to believe in fairies, turns 35 with a new E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial 35th Anniversary Limited Edition (Universal) plus additional Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K Ultra HD editions. Henry Thomas is Elliot, an emotionally bruised kid suffering under his parents’ separation who finds
- [Blu-ray: Jackie Chan begins in ‘Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow / Drunken Master’ from Twilight Time](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-jackie-chan-begins-snake-eagles-shadow-drunken-master-twilight-time/): Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow / Drunken Master (Twilight Time) Boyish, baby-faced Jackie Chan trained at the famed Peking Opera Academy, had an early career as a stunt man, supporting player and fight choreographer in scores of Hong Kong films, and was unexpectedly chosen as “the next Bruce Lee” in a series of stiff, serious revenge
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of September 15](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-september-15/): Filmmaker’s annual collection of 25 new voices in independent film has arrived, a clutch of movie makers, with influences ranging from Laura Moss’s love of horror films to Jessica Kingdon’s reconnection with her mother’s Chinese heritage, to discover and, in a few cases at least, excitedly anticipate their future development. “I’m not going to declare
- [Review: Rebel in the Rye](https://parallax-view.org/review-rebel-rye/): Rebel in the Rye is not as terrible as its title, so we can say that for it. Given that its subject had a razor-sharp ear for titles himself—I mean, who can top For Esmé–With Love and Squalor or A Perfect Day for Bananafish?—you might expect a little better from a movie that purports to tell the story
- [Blu-ray: It Comes at Night](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-it-comes-at-night/): The title of It Comes at Night (2017) sets certain expectations. What exactly comes at night? But the survival thriller from writer/director Trey Edward Shults, set sometime after the ravages of an unnamed and unexplained plague have ripped through the cities and sent survivors into the isolation of the wilderness, isn’t about monsters (human or otherwise) who
- [Review: The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean](https://parallax-view.org/review-life-times-judge-roy-bean/): [Originally published in Movietone News 22, April 1973] Curious that both films built around the legendary Judge Roy Bean, self-styled purveyor of Law West of the Pecos, should suffer so grossly from mode trouble. The Westerner, directed by William Wyler in 1940, featured one of the all-time great performances on screen in the presence of
- [Silents Please! – ‘Beggars of Life’ with Louise Brooks, ‘Varieté’ from Germany, and more](https://parallax-view.org/silents-please-beggars-life-louise-brooks-variete-germany/): Catching up on some of the silent films released to Blu-ray and DVD in the past months… Beggars of Life (Kino Lorber) William Wellman was one of the most versatile directors of his day, making everything from comedies and musicals to gritty dramas and war movies, and his World War I epic Wings (1927) won the first Academy
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of September 8](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-september-8/): “While the personal plotline is often seen as quintessentially Epsteinian, the lighthouse story tends to be regarded as the product of contractual obligation. In fact, one recurrent criticism made of the film concerns the use of a voice-over that guides us through this larger narrative. This voice is, indeed, very prominent, but it’s also suffused
- [Review: The Villainess](https://parallax-view.org/review-villainess/): The once-vibrant South Korean action movie movement has slowed. What was a steady wave of semi-righteous vengeance sagas has reduced down to a trickle of straight-to-video exports. On the bright side, when one of them does still manage to make it to American theaters, they’re usually worth the ticket price. The absurdly flashy The Villainess takes a
- [Review: Crown Heights](https://parallax-view.org/review-crown-heights/): Crown Heights won the Audience Award for Best Dramatic Feature at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. That’s a pretty good call, given that the movie shirks the kind of feel-good uplift that often marks such awards. Granted, it does have a redemption arc built into it—one many viewers will already know, especially if they heard the This
- [Blu-ray: 'Alien: Covenant'](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-alien-covenant/): You may recall Prometheus with both awe and astonishment, a film with astounding moments of beauty and horror and brilliance bumping up against stupidity and sloppiness and half-baked ideas. Alien: Covenant (2017), the second film in the Alien prequel series, takes place a decade after the events of Prometheus (2012) and continues writing the xenomorph origin story with a new cast of potential
- [Silents Please! – A ‘Knighthood’ for Marion Davies](https://parallax-view.org/silents-please-knighthood-marion-davies/): I’d always known Marion Davies is one of the most gifted comediennes of the silent era, thanks to her collaborations with King Vidor, The Patsy (1928) and Show People (1928), two magnificent comedies carried by Davies’ charisma and empathy as well as her easy way with comedy, and readily available on DVD thanks to the Warner Archive. But she
- [Review: The Thief Who Came to Dinner](https://parallax-view.org/review-thief-who-came-dinner/): [Originally published in Movietone News 23, May-June 1973] The spectre of Blake Edwards hangs over The Thief Who Came to Dinner because two of his frequent collaborators worked on it and because Edwards himself might have made the film go, which Bud Yorkin hasn't managed to do. Thief cries out for Edwards's special knack of
- [Blu-ray: Sacha Guitry’s ‘La Poison’ on Criterion](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-sacha-guitrys-la-poison-criterion/): Actor, director, and playwright Sacha Guitry was a giant of French cinema as writer, director, and star of a series of witty and inventive movies from the 1930s through the 1950s. For his weirdly exuberant black comedy La Poison (1951) he gives the lead to the great Michel Simon, who plays a gruff bear of a gardener
- [Blu-ray: ‘Early Women Filmmakers’ – An anthology from Flicker Alley](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-early-women-filmmakers-anthology-flicker-alley/): A year after Kino’s superb Pioneers of African-American Cinema, Flicker Alley’s Early Women Filmmakers collects and curates the work of women filmmakers in the U.S. and Europe before World War II. Women ironically had more opportunities in the early years of filmmaking, not just as directors but as writers, editors, and producers, than they did after the coming
- [Review: Close Encounters of the Third Kind](https://parallax-view.org/review-close-encounters-third-kind-jameson-1977/): [Originally published in The Weekly (Seattle), December 14, 1977] It's getting harder and harder for a movie to just happen anymore. I'm not talking about the ways movies get made (although, to be sure, that's become an extremely messy business), but the ways movies and audiences get together. In the absence of a vast public
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of September 1](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-september-1/): “Earlier this year marked another 40th anniversary: that of George Lucas's Star Wars (1977), which back in May was remembered in a flurry of appreciations and think-pieces. The two films remain tied together in history. They share a composer and a concept artist, and Hollywood lore holds that Spielberg and a beleaguered Lucas traded box office points
- [Review: The Trip to Spain](https://parallax-view.org/review-trip-spain/): Forty years ago the Best Song Oscar took a catastrophic turn—“You Light Up My Life” was the 1977 victor—and the category has never really been the same. Tepid pop songs and the occasional Disney original tend to scoop up the award, albeit with notable exceptions. But before that year, the list of Oscar Best Songs
- [Review: Slither](https://parallax-view.org/review-slither-1973/): [Originally published in Movietone News 24, July-August 1973] Slither ends up being one of the major disappointments of the season because, for about half its length, it promises to be one memorable movie, and once it starts falling apart we experience a very painful sense of the diminution of large possibilities. James Caan plays a
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of August 25](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-august-25/): “Those films are less about what is happening than they are about our position towards it. Most of all, they ask the question: Do we believe or not? The same is true for many feature films. In fact, the camera deliberately tends to arrive at the scene a bit too early or a bit too
- [Review: Good Time](https://parallax-view.org/film-review-good-time/): Future teen heartthrobs seeking to change their images would do well to consider the example of Robert Pattinson. Cast in the first Twilight movie in 2008, playing a sparkly-skinned vampire with a romantically morose attitude, Pattinson exploded into dreamboat status overnight. Perhaps understandably, he moved through the sequels like a man who’d been sentenced to them as
- [How do you not find that hilarious? Celebrating Jerry Lewis](https://parallax-view.org/not-find-hilarious-celebrating-jerry-lewis/): Take it from experience: one of the first questions asked of any Jerry Lewis fan who declares his admiration is, “Do you really find him funny?” The question isn’t as confrontational as it seems; read generously, there’s even a bit of a back-handed compliment in there. Sure, he’s an interesting case study in American celebrity,
- [Blu-ray: Jackie Chan in ‘Railroad Tigers’ and ‘Kung Fu Yoga’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-jackie-chan-railroad-tigers-kung-fu-yoga/): It took so long for Hollywood so long to finally find a way to harness the unique mix of martial arts mastery, dance-like grace, playful humor, and giddy charm that had made Jackie Chan a superstar throughout the rest of the world that he was almost too old to show off the extent of his
- [Now That You've Seen the Solar Eclipse, Watch These Movies](https://parallax-view.org/now-youve-seen-solar-eclipse-watch-movies/): The solar eclipse has held an almost mystical fascination for humans from the moment we first looked into the heavens. To civilizations throughout history that depended on the cycles of the sun and moon and the seasons for survival, it was an inexplicable event, the work of gods or demons and a harbinger of ill
- [Video: Framing Pictures for August 2017](https://parallax-view.org/video-framing-pictures-for-august-2017/): Film critics and Seattle film mavens Robert Horton, Richard T. Jameson, Kathleen Murphy and Bruce Reid dive into two new films: Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk and Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit. Then, Jeanne Moreau's recent passing sparks a conversation about the love of film, the love of talking about film, and why cinema captivates us. You can also watch it on the Seattle Channel website. Keep
- [Review: The Ghoul](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-ghoul/): Movies that worm their way into a disturbed character’s head can be a discomfiting experience, especially when they’re done really well. (I firmly believe that Lodge Kerrigan’s Clean, Shaven is a great film. I also believe that you’d have to work pretty hard to get me to ever watch it again.) The British import The Ghoul is a clever,
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of August 18](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-august-18/): At Film Comment, praise for an overlooked director and one of the most famous movie stars who still hasn’t gotten his due, as Nick Pinkerton looks at the career of Gerd Oswald (“In depicting incessant small-talk as a kind of water torture drip on a delicate sensibility, [Crime of Passion] pulls up just short of
- [Review: Logan Lucky](https://parallax-view.org/review-logan-lucky/): The Logan brothers list their family’s dismal relationship to luck, ticking through some of the calamities that have befallen the clan. One piece of evidence is “Uncle Stickley’s electrocution,” a colorful citation. Who was this Uncle Stickley? How did he get electrocuted? Why was he named Stickley? These questions remain unanswered and Uncle Stickley is
- [Review: Scorpio](https://parallax-view.org/review-scorpio-michael-winner/): [Originally published in Movietone News 23, May-June 1973] Michael Winner was once identified with middle-aged impersonations of youth pictures (The System aka The Girl Getters, You Must Be Joking, The Jokers). What was so striking about most of those pictures was that nobody, least of all the swinging youths, had much fun. In the past
- [MC Squared: David Patrick Lowery's 'A Ghost Story'](https://parallax-view.org/mc-squared-david-patrick-lowery-a-ghost-story/): "I think these things matter."—David Patrick Lowery, Some Analog Lines, 2006 The first thing that strikes you is the frame. The classic 4:3 ratio, but with rounded corners, looking for all the world like shape of the old family-vacation slide shows of two generations ago. In fact, we’ve seen this before. Movies sometimes start with
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of August 11](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-august-11/): “The distinctive tone of Minnellian melodrama rises out of the protagonist’s frustrated attempt to sublimate desire into art and transform the real with the imaginary. This project is doomed, but it provides the films with an impressive stylistic ‘excess’ or melodramatic delirium. It also makes the artist a lonely figure. We occasionally feel this loneliness
- [Review: Wind River (2)](https://parallax-view.org/review-wind-river/): Actor Taylor Sheridan certainly came bolting out of the gate as a screenwriter, with his scripts for 2015’s Sicario and last year’s Hell or High Water displaying a firm grasp of pulp storytelling dynamics and an eagerness to explore the darker aspects of the human condition. (That both films had terrific directors in charge, with Denis Villeneuve and David
- [Review: Wind River (1)](https://parallax-view.org/review-wind-river-1/): I’m not sure when the phrase “the dialogue sounds written” became a put-down when we talk about movies. It’s good that people are hip to cinema as a visual medium and all, but smart, sculpted dialogue—from Shakespeare to Billy Wilder—is something to celebrate. In a movie age when words are meant to sound improvised by
- [Video: Framing Pictures for July 2017](https://parallax-view.org/video-framing-pictures-july-2017/): Film critics and Seattle film mavens Robert Horton, Richard T. Jameson, Kathleen Murphy and Bruce Reid discuss the "B" movies--Baby Driver, The Bad Batch, and The Beguiled--and the legacy of Alfred Hitchcock (spurred by the release of Hitchcock's breakthrough film The Lodger on Criterion Blu-ray and DVD). These discussions are held in the screening room of Scarecrow Video on the second
- [Blu-ray: ‘The Breaking Point’ on Criterion](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-breaking-point-criterion/): The Breaking Point (1950), the second of three big screen adaptations of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, stars John Garfield as Harry Morgan, the role that Humphrey Bogart played in the original. The Howard Hawks film took great liberties with Hemingway’s story. This version is more faithful but takes its own liberties. Harry is a
- [Review: Roma](https://parallax-view.org/review-roma-federico-fellini/): [Originally published in Movietone News 23, May-June 1973] Roma is a product of Fellini's self-indulgence. He puts everything he's loved about Rome, and himself, upon the screen, in semi-documentary style, with the only unifying factor being a weak autobiographical framework. It's like a big home movie shot by lovingly nostalgic professionals. The color is exquisite,
- [Review: Live and Let Die](https://parallax-view.org/review-live-let-die/): [Originally published in Movietone News 24, July-August 1973] Sean Connery knew when to get out. The new James Bond film is a poor-kid's followup to the modest achievements of the preceding seven Fleming adaptations (I'm not counting the multi-director fiasco Casino Royale, backed by a different producer). The double-entendres fairly double over with arthritis, the
- [Blu-ray: Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Pulse’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-kiyoshi-kurosawas-pulse/): “Do you want to meet a ghost?” The meditative and metaphysical horror cinema of Kiyoshi Kurosawa made him one of the masters of Japanese horror during its amazing cycle of surreal and nightmarish horror films of the 1990s and 2000s, but his films never really crossed over to the general audience in the U.S. His
- [Blu-ray: Colossal](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-colossal/): Colossal (2017) is the oddest and most inventive film to come out of the new wave of giant monster movies. It stars Anne Hathaway as Gloria, an out-of-work writer turned reckless party girl and black-out drunk who is kicked out of the Manhattan apartment she shares with her exasperated boyfriend (Dan Stevens) and returns to her
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of August 4](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-august-4/): “This eventually leads to one of the only purely erotic sequences in To’s body of work, in which Yam’s and Lin’s characters share a cigarette on a leisurely drive in a vintage Mercedes convertible. The narrative purpose of this or any other sequence in Sparrow is secondary at best. It’s all about the musicality that’s
- [Review: Detroit](https://parallax-view.org/review-detroit-robert-horton/): Kathryn Bigelow is the only woman to win the Best Director Oscar (for The Hurt Locker), and her reputation is largely associated with the formidable kinetic skills she brings to action pictures such as Strange Days and Point Break. What’s less known about her is that she came of age in the conceptual-art scene in New York in the
- [Review: 13 Minutes](https://parallax-view.org/review-13-minutes/): Downfall, director Oliver Hirschbiegel's exploration of Adolf Hitler's final days, succeeded by going deep, fully acknowledging its subject's unimaginable monstrousness while also locating an aggrieved peevishness that made him fascinatingly, horribly relatable. (Can a zillion YouTube parodies be wrong? Well, yes, but not in this case.) 13 Minutes, Hirschbiegel's return to the time frame, unfortunately can't
- [Blu-ray: Ghost in the Shell 2017](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-ghost-shell-2017/): The live-action Ghost in the Shell (2017) is both a big-screen adaptation of the long-running Japanese manga (comic book) by Shirow Masume and a remake of the landmark animated 1995 feature from Mamoru Oshii. No matter how you split the difference, the film had a high bar to clear even before the controversy over the casting of
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of July 28](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-july-28/): “Last year, a series of Fulci’s films and several exhibitions of postwar Italian painting coincided on New York’s cultural calendar. Shows of Schifano’s work and that of several other figures in the Italian avant-garde of that period, such as Alighiero Boetti, Giulio Paolini, Alberto Burri, and Fabio Mauri, colonized uptown art galleries. Downtown at Anthology
- [Review: Landline](https://parallax-view.org/review-landline/): Jenny Slate’s opening monologue in Obvious Child is the kind of thing that weeds out the uptight among us. Its indecorous references to bodily emissions and the gunky realities of sex are meant to set up her character as a truth-telling stand-up comic, but also serve notice that the movie itself will take no prisoners when engaging
- [Review: Oklahoma Crude](https://parallax-view.org/review-oklahoma-crude/): [Originally published in Movietone News 24, July-August 1973] What I kept thinking about throughout Oklahoma Crude was: What's George C. Scott doing in this? Why, given the stature and range of selection that (I assume) follows on a virtually one-man triumph like Patton, would he choose to lavish himself on such an unimaginative, dramatically undifferentiated
- [Review: The Hireling](https://parallax-view.org/review-hireling-2/): [Originally published in Movietone News 24, July-August 1973] The Hireling is, I believe, Alan Bridges's first film. Aside from rather too frequently belaboring the contrast between indifferent wealth and pathetic poverty in the early part of the film, Bridges manages to pretty much avoid the stylistic excesses to which debuting directors are often prone. However,
- [Blu-ray: ‘The Lodger’ – Alfred Hitchcock begins](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-lodger-alfred-hitchcock-criterion/): The Lodger (1926) isn’t the first film directed by Alfred Hitchcock—it’s actually his third, though it does mark his first feature produced in Britain after directing two co-productions in Germany—but even Hitchcock embraced it as the first “Alfred Hitchcock film.” He announces his arrival in the cinematic jolt of the opening scene: a close-up of a
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of July 21](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-july-21/): “Good Morning is inarguably the least loved and least representative in the Ozu oeuvre. But as is often true of early comedy in more or less anybody’s oeuvre—whether or not they’re known as comic artists—Good Morning is one of the seeds from which Ozu’s later works grow, a sort of first principle. It is perhaps a
- [Review: Dunkirk](https://parallax-view.org/review-dunkirk/): Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is, undeniably, about the famed World War II evacuation. But it’s also very much about how Nolan makes movies, and how he wants us to watch them. Like other adventurous projects such as Memento and Inception, his new film is a weirdly structured but tantalizing jigsaw puzzle, its pieces assembled with the ingenuity of a maniacally complicated
- [Review: The Crazies](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-crazies/): [Originally published in Movietone News 50, June 1976] A hand unscrews a series of lightbulbs. A switch is flicked on and the room stays dark. Shadows and forms dart out of vision before they can be made out. A pretty little girl clutching a stuffed toy protests, "Billy, you're trying to scare me!" Then there
- [Review: Sleuth](https://parallax-view.org/review-sleuth-1973/): [Originally published in Movietone News 23, May-June 1973] The only thing really wrong with Sleuth is that it isn't much much better than it already is and that, by its very nature, it can't be. On the level of craftsmanship it is an unqualified joy. Anthony Shaffer's lines are crisp, civilized, cozily cruel. As a
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of July 14](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-july-14/): “The three features Berger and Tanner made together are essentially films about class. Characters are struggling to live life after political failure, finding ways to resume their resistance to a value system that remains ever-present and crushing. Berger, as a writer and as a human being—the two were never truly separated—was engaged in a similar
- [Review: War for the Planet of the Apes](https://parallax-view.org/review-war-planet-apes/): Back when I could afford to attend big outdoor sporting events, I invariably got gooseflesh during the pregame al fresco performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The Husky Marching Band does an especially bombs-bursting-in-air version. So maybe I’m a sucker for this kind of thing already, but I do think the deployment of the U.S. national anthem
- [Review: Wedding in White](https://parallax-view.org/review-wedding-in-white-1973/): [Originally published in Movietone News 24, July-August 1973] Wedding in White begins in a cellar and, spiritually, stays there. Not a single vagrant ray of light is permitted to fall on the blighted existence of Jeannie, whose mushroom pallor is only one manifestation of the death-in-life she lives in a benighted house in a benighted
- [Review: The Day of the Jackal](https://parallax-view.org/review-day-of-the-jackal-1973/): [Originally published in Movietone News 23, May-June 1973] The critical ascendancy of Fred Zinnemann has always bewildered me. Still more bewildering is the question of how to engage his inadequacy in critical terms. How about this? Fred Zinnemann is the sort of filmmaker who gives good taste a bad name. His work is pretentious, and
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of July 7](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-july-7/): Freshly returned from their pilgrimage to Il Cinema Ritrovato festival, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson offer three articles outlining their fresh discoveries and welcome reacquaintances, from large-format experiments that actually predate moving pictures to the latest from Agnès Varda. Whether breaking down the humor in an early Ophüls or reveling in the fine early adaptors
- [Review: Spider-Man: Homecoming](https://parallax-view.org/review-spider-man-homecoming/): Funny without being tongue-in-cheek and epic without being ponderous, Spider-Man: Homecoming is what a summer movie should be. This latest installment in the Marvel comics blockbuster-verse is as bouncy as its web-spinning hero. Instead of numbly moving the plot forward for the sake of the Marvel corporate plan (I mean “storytelling initiative”), it seamlessly tucks
- [Review: César and Rosalie](https://parallax-view.org/review-cesar-and-rosalie/): [Originally published in Movietone News 23, May-June 1973] There's no good reason why this film shouldn't be entitled César and Rosalie and David since that's a much more complete and accurate indication of what's going on herein. Rosalie (Romy Schneider) is the mistress of César (Yves Montand), a vulgar but dynamic and likable junk tycoon
- [Blu-ray: ‘Death Line’ (aka ‘Raw Meat’) on Blue Underground](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-death-line-aka-raw-meat-blue-underground/): Death Line (aka Raw Meat) (1972) – Gary Sherman directs this underrated (and for years largely unseen) British horror film about the last survivor of a literal underground clan (trapped in a subway construction cave in a century before) who emerges from his cave to hunt for food on the London Underground. Yes, it’s a cannibal film,
- [Review: O Lucky Man!](https://parallax-view.org/review-o-lucky-man/): [Originally published in Movietone News 24, July-August 1973] One of the most interesting things about O Lucky Man! is that it is readily comprehensible at the same time that it consistently achieves a sense of mystery. Nearly three hours in length, it is another social-consciousness film from Britain's Lindsay Anderson, and it's also much more
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of July 1](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-july-1/): “The sheer pleasure in filming that can be found in just about all of Gréville’s works touched me at the time and still moves me today: fleetingly present in commissions (Le port du désir, 1954, deceptively present, and containing a beautiful underwater sequence, in Dorothée cherche l’amour, 1945, which also has a very well-directed gunfight);
- [Review: The Beguiled](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-beguiled-2017/): The opening of The Beguiled is lush on every level: Mist hangs in the moss-draped trees as a young girl goes out mushroom-picking, her singing underscored by an uncanny low rumble. We’re in the Civil War South, so that rumble must be battle, a muffled sound that barely intrudes on the idyllic scene. This is
- [Review: Two People](https://parallax-view.org/review-two-people/): [Originally published in Movietone News 23, May-June 1973] Two People represents the triumph of cinematic presence and naturally lush surfaces over script and selling campaign. Well, not quite a triumph, perhaps, but Two People is a much better movie—or experience to be had at the movies—than most descriptions of it have indicated, least of all
- [Review: La Bete Humaine](https://parallax-view.org/review-la-bete-humaine/): [Originally published in Movietone News 24, July-August 1973] Beginning in this issue, and continuing whenever occasion warrants and space permits, MOVIETONE NEWS will include a retrospective quickie or two among the normal short notices on current cinema. In the past MTN writers were able to comment on older films only in advance of seeing or
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of June 23](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-june-23/): "Though Le trou is remarkably more austere, it is still in the tradition of all of Becker’s previous movies, built as they are out of lost time. A constellation of glances, gestures, and acts of physical grace, the film is an unlikely blend of styles. If the overwhelming feeling is for the pleasure derived from
- [Review: After the Storm](https://parallax-view.org/review-after-the-storm/): Sometimes a storm is just a storm. But this is rarely true in movies. If clouds gather on the horizon, it’s usually an omen about relationship troubles or a giant monster approaching, or possibly a twister leading the way to the land of Oz. Instead of trying to disguise the significance of the storm in
- [Review: High Plains Drifter](https://parallax-view.org/review-high-plains-drifter/): [Originally published in Movietone News 24, July-August 1973] As a director, Clint Eastwood cannot be simply written off as mindlessly imitative. He is far too intelligent in his eclectic appreciation of what works in the films of Sergio Leone, Don Siegel, and Alfred Hitchcock. Unfortunately, Eastwood has not yet subsumed what he has learned from
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of June 16](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-june-16/): “The discovery of a ‘secret child’ (L’Enfant secret, J’entends plus la guitare), the failed or successful suicide attempts (Les Hautes Solitudes; the short Rue Fontaine, 1984; Night Wind, 1999; Frontier of Dawn, 2007), May ’68 (at the core of Regular Lovers but repeatedly referenced in many others), electroshock therapy (L’Enfant secret, Frontier of Dawn), the inaugural infidelity of
- [Video: Framing Pictures for June 2017](https://parallax-view.org/video-framing-pictures-june-2017/): Film critics and Seattle film mavens Robert Horton, Richard T. Jameson, Kathleen Murphy and Bruce Reid discuss Wonder Woman, David Lynch's return to the Pacific Northwest Gothic of Twin Peaks, and home video releases of two classics: Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night and Sam Peckinpah's The Ballad of Cable Hogue. These discussions are held in the screening room of Scarecrow Video
- [Review: Beatriz at Dinner](https://parallax-view.org/review-beatriz-dinner/): In Beatriz at Dinner, Salma Hayek’s face is cleansed of glamour. But even more noticeable is the expression she wears: empathetic yet often empty, as though a life of being around affluent people had trained her character to wear a mask of watchful neutrality. This is apt, because she plays Beatriz, a Mexican immigrant who
- [SIFF 2017: It's a wrap!](https://parallax-view.org/siff-2017-wrap/): The Golden Space Needle Audience Awards were handed out for SIFF 2017 on Sunday, June 11, and soon after the Best of SIFF 2017 line-up was announced. Parallax View has both covered for you here. (You can also peruse reviews, interviews, and other features collected and curated in Parallax View's SIFF 20187 Guide here.) Rodrigo
- [Review: My Cousin Rachel](https://parallax-view.org/review-cousin-rachel/): Is she or isn’t she? This is the question, and the tantalizing draw, of My Cousin Rachel, a new adaptation of a Daphne du Maurier novel. The story is the sort of genteel-gothic potboiler that du Maurier mastered in Rebecca, and like that novel it features a woman arriving at a mansion where mystery awaits.
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of June 9](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-june-9/): Criterion’s latest release of another collection culled from the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project has Martin Scorsese’s name and stamp of approval on the box cover art, but some hefty names on the liner notes doing the actual introductions. This round features Phillip Lopate pondering the Fassbinderian elements of Brocka’s Insiang (“It is hard to
- [Review: Paris Can Wait](https://parallax-view.org/review-paris-can-wait/): In the notes I jotted down while watching Paris Can Wait, I find these words scribbled: “Everything is off.” I don’t remember what specific scene or moment I was referring to, but I know what I meant. The timing is awkward, the camera doesn’t seem to know how to frame people for anything other than
- [Blu-ray: ‘Rumble Fish’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-rumble-fish/): Francis Ford Coppola described Rumble Fish (1983), his screen adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s young adult novel, as “an art film for teenagers.” He shot it right after making The Outsiders (1982), also adapted from a Hinton novel, but where that was a lush, operatic tale, Coppola made Rumble Fish in stylized black and white,
- [Documentary: Capturing the Human Experience of War](https://parallax-view.org/documentary-capturing-human-experience-war/): There is no shortage of documentaries on war. The subject fascinates us as history, as sociology, and as drama. Some documentaries chronicle history in great detail, some grapple with the issues and forces behind the conflicts, and some flat-out propagandize. But very few of those documentaries actually engage with the human experience. So for Memorial
- [Hollywood Goes to War](https://parallax-view.org/hollywood-goes-war/): When America entered World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hollywood was also drafted into the effort — not just to support the cause but also to beat the drums of patriotism and duty. America was going to war and with it, so did the entire country. The men enlisted, the women took
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of May 26](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-may-26/): The journal Movie might only release one issue a year, but it always guarantees you plenty to chew on. This edition contains a dossier concerning opening scenes, but these close readings bore deeper into the mysteries and loveliness of the selections than some entertaining blogger rounding up and describing his favorite such, and how these
- [Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales](https://parallax-view.org/review-pirates-caribbean-dead-men-tell-no-tales/): Almost everything worth anything in the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie is geared toward spectacle. You want to see ghost sharks? We have great whites and hammerheads, rotted away but still capable of taking a bite out of Captain Jack Sparrow’s dinghy. Want to see Sparrow escape from a guillotine? A rescue sends our
- [Blu-ray: Walter Hill’s ‘Streets of Fire’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-walter-hill-streets-fire/): A self-described “A Rock and Roll Fable” from “another time, another place,” I think of Walter Hill’s Streets of Fire (1984) as a rock and roll western dropped into the urban badlands of a brick and neon noir. It opens on what appears to be the 1950s frozen in time, a working class neighborhood forgotten
- [Blu-ray: Logan](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-logan/): Can a comic book superhero movie tell a human story? Logan (2017) makes the case that the genre is not limited to spectacle (though this film does offer some accomplished—and violent—action scenes), end of the world stakes, or world-building chapters in a massive franchise. Set in the near future of 2029, which is a lot
- [Blu-ray: Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-jordan-peeles-get/): The Stepford Wives meets Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in Get Out (2017), the directorial debut of writer / comedian Jordan Peele, a tricky and successful mix of social satire, modern horror, and savvy commentary on race as experienced by a person of color in a largely white society. Daniel Kaluuya stars as Chris Washington,
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of May 19](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-may-19/): “Virtually plot-less, Sheep alternates its focus on Stan, his wife and kids, and the people in his Watts neighborhood, representing a community oppressed, yet teeming with life. Stan works at a slaughterhouse, and it’s changing him so much so his wife (Kaycee Moore) does not recognize him anymore. He’s distant, frowns, and has the thousand-yard
- [Sifting Through SIFF](https://parallax-view.org/sifting-through-siff/): At some point the numbers are overwhelming. This is the 43rd annual Seattle International Film Festival, a marathon that lasts 25 days across 15 venues (Bellevue, Kirkland, and Shoreline included), with around 400 feature-length and short films from 80 countries. There are gobs of panels and festivities and visiting filmmakers. It seems churlish to be
- [SIFFing: Parallax View's SIFF 2017 Guide](https://parallax-view.org/siffing-parallax-views-siff-2017-guide/): The 43rd Annual Seattle International Film Festival opens on Thursday, May 18, with the opening night gala presentation of The Big Sick, from director Michael Showalter and writer/star Kumail Nanjiani, and closes 24 days later on Sunday, June 11 with the North American premiere of Raoul Peck's The Young Karl Marx. In between there are
- [Review: The Friends of Eddie Coyle](https://parallax-view.org/review-friends-eddie-coyle/): [Originally published in Movietone News 24, July-August 1973] The French Connection was about as good as a movie can get without reflecting the creative concentration of a single controlling artistic presence. Ernest Tidyman's script evoked a convincing sense of a behavioral reality realized and sustained in pungent language that sounded as if it were spoken
- [Review: Melvin and Howard](https://parallax-view.org/review-melvin-and-howard/): [originally published in The Weekly, November 5, 1980] Middle of the night in the Nevada desert, a little ways off the Tonapah Highway. Melvin Dummar has left the main road to take a whiz. Decent young fella: even at this remove from civilization, he steps around to the blind side of his truck and looks
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of May 12](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-may-12/): “I show up at the airport. And the guy asked me, ‘Is there anything we might find suspicious in there?’ I said, ‘There’s an art piece [read: a glass bong] inside in the shape of a gun.’ And literally the entire security department was like, ‘What is wrong with you?’ Long story short, it made
- [Review: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword](https://parallax-view.org/review-guy-ritchie-king-arthur-legend-of-the-sword/): It’s easy to pick on something like a celebrity cameo to measure a movie’s hollowness. So if I tell you that soccer god-turned-style icon David Beckham pops up halfway through the new King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, I trust it will stir plenty of anticipatory ridicule. Beckham submits to uglifying makeup scars for his
- [Blu-ray/DVD: ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-raydvd-jeanne-dielman-23-quai-du-commerce-1080-bruxelles/): “A singular work in film history,” begins the description on back of the case of Criterion’s release of Chantal Akerman’s astounding Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (France, 1975). That is no hyperbole. Jeanne Dielman is a painstaking, excruciatingly exacting portrait of the life of a perfectly organized homemaker, an epic portrait of
- [Blu-ray: Josef von Sternberg ‘s ‘Anatahan’ restored](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-josef-von-sternberg-s-anatahan-restored/): Inspired by the true story of Japanese sailors stranded on a deserted island during World War II, Anatahan (1953) was the final film completed by Josef von Sternberg. In a career where he was increasingly forced to compromise his style and sensibility, it marked his final hurrah: a film over which he had complete control.
- [Five Sleazy Pieces](https://parallax-view.org/five-sleazy-pieces/): [Originally published in Movietone News 25, September 1973] Recently I encountered a phenomenon—I refuse to call it a book—labeled The Only Good Indian and coauthored by Ralph and Natasha Friars. Its specific sins against the English language and any recognizable form of ratiocination are catalogued elsewhere in this issue. I mention this pseudo-scholarly study of
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of May 5](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-may-5/): “Harlan County, U.S.A. is filled with sounds recorded this way—the voices of local people speaking, shouting, and singing; the hard breathing of protestors running in fear and the rasping breaths of people with black lung; the noise of people laughing, crying, and screaming; and the sound of instruments like fiddles, banjoes, and guitars, calling birds,
- [Review: A Quiet Passion](https://parallax-view.org/review-quiet-passion/): A biopic of Emily Dickinson sounds like a terrible idea, and it probably would be if it unfolded along conventional lines. But what if it were as unconventional as Dickinson’s poetry? I don’t mean a movie that is la-di-dah “poetic,” with out-of-focus shots of blossoms falling as classical music plays. What if the cinematic approach
- [SIFF 2017: From 'The Big Sick' to 'The Young Karl Marx' - over 400 movies in 24 days](https://parallax-view.org/siff-2017-big-sick-young-karl-marx-400-movies/): The 43rd Annual Seattle International Film Festival opens on Thursday, May 18, with the opening night gala presentation of Sundance and SXSW hit The Big Sick from director Michael Showalter and writer/star Kumail Nanjiani. 24 days later, the North American premiere of Raoul Peck's The Young Karl Marx takes the closing night spot at Cinerama
- [Review: Godspell](https://parallax-view.org/review-godspell/): [Originally published in Movietone News 25, September 1973] Without having seen Jesus Christ Superstar yet, I'm hardly in a position to state definitively how the Savior is doing with and being done by the moneychangers and popcorn vendors this Year of Our Lord. Of Godspell in particular the main thing to be said is that,
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of April 28](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-april-28/): The new issue of cléo is organized around the theme of “soft,” realized by such diverse analyses as Mallory Andrews on the ingenious costuming choices of 9 to 5’s Ann Roth (“Each woman leaves the office early to commiserate at a local bar. Judy and Doralee have covered their outfits in matching cream jackets, and
- [Preview: Seventh Art Stand](https://parallax-view.org/preview-seventh-art-stand/): Alongside the woven objects and 16th-century painted tiles in the Seattle Art Museum’s Islamic Collection hang a series of entirely modern artifacts. Iraqi artist Qasim Sabti’s “Book Cover Collage” pieces are rendered from the remains of books retrieved from Baghdad libraries in the wake of the 2003 bombings. They stand as proof of the ability
- [Blu-ray: The silent horror of ‘Behind the Door’ restored](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-silent-horror-behind-door-restored/): Behind the Door (1919) (Flicker Alley, Blu-ray+DVD) was for decades a film known by reputation only. A good film, yes, but more than that a notorious one, for what lay behind the door was… No spoilers because the film, once known to exist only in incomplete form, has been reconstructed and restored by the San
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of April 21](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-april-21/): “I found a lot of prototypes of noirish images during my recent trawling through Library of Congress films from 1914-1918. In this era, it seems, filmmakers competed to create striking, even shocking, lighting effects. Later directors and cinematographers would adopt many of them as proven tools for boosting their scenes’ emotional power.” David Bordwell finds
- [Review: Free Fire](https://parallax-view.org/review-free-fire/): Roughly 90 percent of Free Fire is set inside a rundown warehouse, the location for a big shoot-out between warring outlaw factions. It’s as though director Ben Wheatley decided—either embracing or spoofing a tired cliché—to stage an entire movie in the spot where action pictures invariably end up anyway. We get to know this place
- [Video: Framing Pictures - April 2017](https://parallax-view.org/video-framing-pictures-april-2017/): Film critics and Seattle film mavens Robert Horton, Richard T. Jameson, Kathleen Murphy and Bruce Reid discuss Raw, the first offering by French director Julia Docournau, and offer a master class on veteran filmmaker Walter Hill and his new thriller, The Assignment. Also, get to know Emily Dickinson in the Oscar contender A Quiet Passion. These discussions are held
- [Review: Kid Blue](https://parallax-view.org/review-kid-blue/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] Kid Blue, completed more than a year ago, enjoyed a belated and unsuccessful release and arrived in the Jet City even later. Reportedly Twentieth Century Fox advertised the picture as a straight western somewhere in the country and failed to find an audience for it (whatever audience
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of April 14](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-april-14/): “A meeting—formal or informal, routine or hastily gathered, tedious or contentious—amounts to a Wiseman signature, like a shootout in a Tarantino movie or a dirty joke in a Judd Apatow comedy. When a group of people gather in a room, the business of the world is being done (or postponed or discussed or avoided, which
- [Review: Colossal](https://parallax-view.org/review-colossal/): The big concept within Nacho Vigalondo’s Colossal is clever enough that the movie might’ve rested on it alone. I mean, I can’t remember the last time I saw a film about a woman who steps into a kiddie park in her hometown and causes a giant reptilian monster to emerge in South Korea. So it’s
- [Review: Sacco and Vanzetti](https://parallax-view.org/review-sacco-vanzetti/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] When challenged that the American and rightwing villains in his State of Siege were too thoroughly villainous and the leftwing revolutionaries too absurdly decent and clean-cut, Costa-Gavras disingenuously replied that he saw nothing terribly wrong in that: why shouldn't the Left indulge itself with black-and-white entertainments when
- [Review: Raw Meat](https://parallax-view.org/review-raw-meat/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] I must confess to being one of those horror film addicts who occasionally even resort to the ozoners in search of the one sleeper that will justify all those wasted hours spent in the scurrilous company of Aztec mummies, moth-eaten werewolves, and green slime. Which is how
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of April 7](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-april-7/): “When he did turn his attention to the ladies, he showed no preference for blondes, brunettes or redheads. He had a warm, wry, unpretentious way of making children feel older and the elderly feel younger; he made all women feel beautiful and all men feel—if not his equal in all ways—at least worthy of his
- [Review: The Assignment](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-assignment/): I interviewed director Walter Hill during the release of his less applauded effort, the 1988 action-comedy Red Heat. That profitable movie paired Arnold Schwarzenegger, as a Soviet investigator, with Jim Belushi, as a Chicago cop. (Ladies and gentlemen: the 1980s.) Before I sat down with Hill for lunch at a downtown Seattle hotel, the publicist
- [Review: White Lightning](https://parallax-view.org/review-white-lightning/): [Originally published in Movietone News 25, September 1973] The most interesting aspect of White Lightning is the squandering of available authenticity. Thanks to Fouad Said's Cinemobile systems, there's nowhere in this country a filmmaking crew can't go and get a movie in the can. The latest Burt Reynolds venture, set in the Deep South, shores
- [Review: The Last American Hero](https://parallax-view.org/review-last-american-hero/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] The Last American Hero is an entertaining genre picture with a serious-sounding title, and so it runs the risk of being underrated in some quarters and overrated in others. Its vision is more casual than the title would imply, yet richer than its unadorned folksiness pretends. First
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of March 31](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-march-31/): “For Rubin, working with Ramis and Murray wasn’t intimidating as much as reassuring: It felt like Hollywood had recognized him for who he was, like it had realized what he could do. ‘It was like, Finally,’ he says now. ‘This is where I belong.’ And then it never happened again.” S. I. Rosenbaum profiles Groundhog
- [Review: Raw](https://parallax-view.org/review-raw/): The last time I had a barf bag handed to me at a movie theater was for a University of Washington screening of George Romero’s Martin, probably in 1979. I didn’t use it, but I appreciated the publicity gimmick. This kind of ploy has an old tradition; when a few audience members fainted at screenings
- [Review: Savages](https://parallax-view.org/review-savages-james-ivory/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] Savages is consistently appealing, intermittently brilliant, and—in the end—very nearly inconsequential. Though given elaborate and oblique treatment, its basic idea is a simple one: the "savage" mud-people whom we see in mock-silent-movie fashion at the start are more or less interchangeable with the elegant, conspicuously "civilized" moderns
- [The Love Story of Bones’ Booth and Brennan in 12 Episodes](https://parallax-view.org/love-story-bones-booth-brennan-12-episodes/): It took 12 years and 245 episodes to tell the story of Temperance Brennan and Seeley Booth on Bones, the Fox series that comes to an end tonight. For those who are curious but lack the time, patience, or commitment to take the journey in its entirety, we’ve put together a guide to the highlights
- [Why 'Bones' Was One of the Most Interesting Love Stories on TV](https://parallax-view.org/bones-love-stories-tv/): After 12 years and 245 episodes, Bones is coming to an end. I know that will come as news to some of you. I mean, that’s the show with Zooey Deschanel’s older sister and the guy who played the brooding vampire on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, right? It’s really still on? Ever since it debuted
- [Of Staircases and Potato Trucks: Fear and Fatness and Alfred Hitchcock](https://parallax-view.org/staircases-potato-trucks-fear-fatness-alfred-hitchcock/): [Originally published in Movietone News 25, September 1973] In film criticism, as in any form of arts criticism, the Biographical Fallacy is to be scrupulously avoided. But in the case of Alfred Hitchcock's films, the Master of Suspense has himself given us precedence for a biographical interpretation of the themes and images which permeate the
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of March 24](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-march-24/): Like so many other film sites, the new Senses of Cinema is in a Golden Anniversary mood, looking back at the films of 1967. Unlike most, it casts the net well beyond the expected subjects. There’s the expected pieces on Accident and PlayTime, but also Alexia Kannas on Branded to Kill (“Suzuki’s explosive treatment of
- [Review: T2 Trainspotting](https://parallax-view.org/review-t2-trainspotting/): Danny Boyle loves his bag of tricks: the split-second cuts and the techno-pop and the crazy, strobing light show. Like a director of TV commercials who has only 30 seconds to sell a story, Boyle hypes everything. Take the gimmicky Who Wants to Be a Millionaire structure of Slumdog Millionaire, or Leonardo DiCaprio night-swimming through
- [Blu-ray: ‘Our Man in Havana’ on Twilight Time](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-man-havana-twilight-time/): Our Man in Havana (1959) (Twilight Time, Blu-ray) is the third and final collaboration between director Carol Reed and writer Graham Greene. In some ways it plays like a sardonic post-script to their great success, The Third Man, in others a transition film between the gritty but heroic espionage thrillers of the forties and fifties
- [Blu-ray/DVD: The Sicilian Clan](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-dvd-sicilian-clan/): Three of the great icons of French crime cinema team up for The Sicilian Clan (France, 1969) (Kino, Blu-ray, DVD). Jean Gabin is Vittorio Manalese, the head of the Sicilian Manalese clan in Paris, Alain Delon the reckless, amoral French criminal and killer Roger, who hires Vittorio’s clan to spring him from custody, and Lino
- [Review: Private Parts](https://parallax-view.org/review-private-parts/): [Originally published in Movietone News 25, September 1973] Anybody out there remember, by any chance, Michael Powell's 1959 flick Peeping Tom? (A disingenuous question, that: he who see Peeping Tom, he remember it, all right all right. Repress the mother, yes, possibly; but forget it? No—as they say—bloody way.) Well, freak fans, it's arrived at
- [Review: The Last of Sheila](https://parallax-view.org/review-last-sheila/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] Little can be said of this film's elusive plot without spoiling the excitement for the viewer. A movie producer invites six friends to spend a week aboard his yacht off the French Riviera, playing a six-day, port-to-port detective game. Each accepts the invitation in hopes of winning
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of March 17](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-march-17/): “St. Stephen’s is known as the Hill, both for its steep topography and its aspiration to be an enlightened beacon (as in the biblical “city on a hill”), and Malick thrived in a culture that emphasized spirituality, intellectualism, and rugged individualism. ‘When I first got there, it was made known that he was the local
- [Review: Beauty and the Beast](https://parallax-view.org/review-beauty-beast-2017-horton/): The pre-publicity for Disney’s live-action version of Beauty and the Beast might have revolved around any number of subjects: Why make a live-action redo of a classic animated film? How would Emma Watson fare outside her Harry Potter world? Had Disney spent too much money (a rumored $300 million, including marketing costs)? As it happens,
- [Blu-ray: Deluge](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-deluge/): Deluge (1933) (Kino Lorber Studio Classics, Blu-ray, DVD), the original end-of-the-world thriller, is a curious and often fascinating artifact. Produced in 1933, before the production code came down on Hollywood, on a relatively modest budget, it imagines not just the destruction of civilization in (unexplained) earthquakes and cataclysmic storms but life after the flood, so
- [Blu-ray/DVD: ‘Mildred Pierce’ on Criterion](https://parallax-view.org/blu-raydvd-mildred-pierce-criterion/): Is Mildred Pierce (1945) (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD) film noir or melodrama? I say why choose? Film noir is almost entirely associated with crime stories and life in the shadows and at night in the city and sure enough Mildred Pierce, based on the novel by James M. Cain, opens with death and darkness and the
- [Review: Child's Play](https://parallax-view.org/review-childs-play/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] Sidney Lumet ventures once more into an ascetic community of men—here a Catholic prep school rather than the African-based British prison camp of The Hill—but this time comes up with only about half a winner. Child's Play is a spellbinder for approximately that fraction of its duration.
- [Review: Paper Moon](https://parallax-view.org/review-paper-moon/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] Though hardly perfect, Paper Moon is more satisfactory than What's Up, Doc? because this time Peter Bogdanovich has found, or conjured up, a comparatively rich setting for his comparatively modest comic sense to work in. Paper Moon may not be funnier than its predecessor, but it has
- [Meet the Trailblazers of Documentary Activism](https://parallax-view.org/meet-trailblazers-documentary-activism/): We think of the cinema of activism in documentary filmmaking as a relatively modern phenomenon, something first awakened in the 1960s and 1970s and popularized by the likes of Michael Moore and Laura Poitras and Alex Gibney. But the success films like Bowling for Columbine (2002) and An Inconvenient Truth (2006), both Oscar winners and box-office
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of March 10](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-march-10/): “These tropes cumulatively function as what philosopher Robert Pfaller has termed “interpassivity”: they cynically perform our annoyance at seeing the same old thing again for us. We can walk out of these films feeling satisfied, refreshed, and maybe even a little superior for seeing how the mechanics of movies work. And yet, this facsimiled dissent
- [Review: My Life as a Zucchini](https://parallax-view.org/review-life-zucchini/): The winners of the Best Animated Feature Oscar tend to be the big hits of the year: Inside Out and Frozen received Academy gold in recent years, for instance. Since the category was added in 2001, only Spirited Away, by legendary filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit interrupted the
- [Review: Lady Ice](https://parallax-view.org/review-lady-ice/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] Tom Gries has at least one unpretentiously good film to his credit in Will Penny; if reports of Lady Ice's production troubles are accurate, then Gries, as the third director assigned the project, cannot be held entirely responsible for the myriad failures of this sloppily assembled pastiche
- [Review: Soylent Green](https://parallax-view.org/review-soylent-green/): [Originally published in Movietone News 25, September 1973] Richard Fleischer's new film is a science-fiction-horror-mystery. The horrors are ecological: pollution, overpopulation, welfare as a national way of life, objectification of human beings. The mystery is the murder of Simonson (Joseph Cotten), head of the Soylent Corporation (from "soy" and "lentil"), producer of the world's food
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of March 3](https://parallax-view.org/the-view-beyond-parallax-more-reads-for-the-week-of-march-3/): “High Noon had a lot going against it. Foreman had never written a Western. Zinnemann had never directed one. Foreman’s screenplay, inspired by a short story in Collier’s magazine called “The Tin Star,” by John W. Cunningham, had no beautiful vistas, no Indian raids, no cattle stampedes.” And then there were the H.U.A.C. hearings, writer Carl Foreman’s insistence
- [Review: Logan](https://parallax-view.org/review-logan/): Listen, if your bones were fused with adamantium, if you’d already outlived a normal lifespan, and if your mutant healing factor had weakened lately, you’d be tired, too. Melancholy, even. Such is the state of the Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) as we meet him in the latest Marvel movie offering, Logan. Wolverine’s place in the comic-book
- [Review: The Boy Who Cried Werewolf](https://parallax-view.org/review-boy-cried-werewolf/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] Two things are tentatively okay about The Boy Who Cried Werewolf: A lot of it is filmed on location in some piney mountain country, and the film thereby falls heir to those vagrant chills that any horror movie shot in a real place with some sense of
- [Review: Mon Oncle Antoine](https://parallax-view.org/review-mon-oncle-antoine/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] "Quebec, the asbestos-mining region, not too long ago." A gray arc of mineral dust flumes through the air and a red pickup sits at the brink of a cliff. A middleaged man gets out of the truck and crawls underneath, grumbling profanely about the lousy maintenance; a
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of February 24](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-february-24/): We've been MIA for a couple of weeks due to various reasons and we're a little late getting up today (due to the editor spending much of the day in bed fighting a cold) but we're back now. “When we settle into her hotel lobby, Heckerling—who has an encyclopedic knowledge of film history—tells me the
- [Review: Dark Night](https://parallax-view.org/review-dark-night/): No subject should be off-limits for filmmakers willing to take a plunge. The degree of difficulty, however, tends to increase sharply with the weightiness of the premise. Dark Night takes an extremely provocative topic—a seemingly random mass shooting—and applies a heavy layer of arty artlessness to the material. Despite a number of striking images (Hélène
- [Video: Framing Pictures – February 2017](https://parallax-view.org/framing-pictures-february-2017/): Film critics and Seattle film mavens Kathleen Murphy, Richard T. Jameson, and Robert Horton discuss the 2017 Oscar race in the February edition of Framing Pictures, just the thing to prepare for the presentation of the Academy Awards on Sunday, February 26. These discussions are held in the screening room of Scarecrow Video on the second Friday
- [Review: A United Kingdom](https://parallax-view.org/review-united-kingdom/): As variations on “We can’t see each other anymore” go, this film’s plot has novelty: After enjoying a wonderful first date in postwar London, the young woman makes it clear to the young man that she would like to see him again. He hesitates, clearly preparing to tell her the truth about something. The sad
- [Review: The Stone Killer](https://parallax-view.org/review-stone-killer/): [Originally published in Movietone News 27, November 1973] It hardly matters what side of the moral fence Charles Bronson is on in a Michael Winner film. Whether he's a noble savage hounded nearly to death by dregs of the American melting pot (Chato's Land), an executive gun done in by his Mafia employers and an
- [Review: The Long Goodbye](https://parallax-view.org/review-long-goodbye/): [Originally published in Movietone News 25, September 1973] The Long Goodbye has been touted as a farewell to a whole genre, or at least to the Raymond Chandler subgenre, of the detective thriller and film noir. But this version of Chandler's only unfilmed (till now) Philip Marlowe novel is best seen as neither farewell nor
- [Noir City Seattle 2017 – Film by Film](https://parallax-view.org/noir-city-2017-film-film/): Noir City 2017 is titled "The Big Knockover" and the theme is heists: big, small, and inevitably doomed. It kicked off Thursday, February 16 with John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950), the godfather of the heist film, and Criss Cross (1949), the darkest, most truly noir-ish heist film ever. I wrote a preview for The
- [Review: The Son of Joseph](https://parallax-view.org/review-son-joseph/): It is always exciting when a filmmaker comes out of nowhere with a fully formed and distinctively new way of seeing the world. It adds intrigue, and a certain amount of wonder, when that filmmaker is in his 60s. Actually, Eugène Green was a youthful 50-something when he made his first feature in 2001, but
- [Testimonial: The Scarecrow Project](https://parallax-view.org/testimonial-scarecrow-project/): Robert Horton joins Philip Wohlstetter, filmmakers Lynn Shelton and Megan Griffiths, and Scarecrow director Kate Barr to testify at the Seattle City Council meeting on the importance of The Scarecrow Project as a non-profit film archive to the City of Seattle. The Scarecrow Project section begins at 1:42
- [Noir City 2017 Highlights Heists and Favors Risk Over Genre Purity](https://parallax-view.org/noir-city-2017-highlights-heists-favors-risk-genre-purity/): Throughout the years of Noir City's Seattle residency, the programming has taken brief detours from the mean streets of hardcore noir to explore side alleys, from early influences on noir to noir influences on other genres. The 2017 festival, which runs February 16-22 and is the biggest to date (20 films in seven days), takes
- [Review: Toni Erdmann](https://parallax-view.org/review-toni-erdmann/): Movie comedy lacks a wild streak. We get funny films occasionally, and certainly there are performers who can get nutsy in short spurts—as Melissa McCarthy’s instant-classic White House press-briefing sketch on last weekend’s Saturday Night Live proved. But the storytelling in most comedies now is tame and tidy, or merely a framework in which comedians
- [PIFF Notes: Portland International Film Festival](https://parallax-view.org/piff-notes-portland-international-film-festival/): Okay, quick show of hands: Has sitting in the dark and temporarily saying goodbye to reality ever seemed like a better idea? Whatever your leanings may be, the Northwest Film Center’s 40th Annual Portland International Film Festival has you more than covered. Featuring over 160 features and shorts, this year’s PIFF lineup offers healthy, yuge doses
- [Blu-ray/DVD: ‘Loving’ – The couple behind the history](https://parallax-view.org/loving/): Loving (2016), Jeff Nichols's portrait of Richard and Mildred Loving, does more than put a face to a landmark Supreme Court decision. Their 1958 marriage was a crime in the state of Virginia because Richard (played by Joel Edgerton with a terse determination) was a white man and Mildred (Ruth Negga, vulnerable yet hopeful) was
- [Review: Scalawag](https://parallax-view.org/review-scalawag/): [Originally published in Movietone News 27, November 1973] Kirk Douglas becomes yet another star to learn he ought to stay in front of the camera. His directorial debut lacks style, wit, pace, visual distinction, common sense—lacks even naïveté, which might have proved at least modestly winning. Indeed, the picture serves up some very ugly doses
- [John Ford 1895-1973](https://parallax-view.org/john-ford-1895-1973/): [Originally published in Movietone News 26, October 1973] JOHN FORD 1895-1973 Can I believe my friends all gone, when their voices are still a glory in my ears? No, and I will stand to say no, and no again. For they remain a living truth within my mind. —from Philip Dunne's screenplay of How Green
- [Review: I Am Not Your Negro](https://parallax-view.org/review-i-am-not-your-negro/): Public intellectuals,” as a species, once roamed the American airwaves. If you flipped on a talk show in 1963 or 1971, you might easily have heard Norman Mailer or Lillian Hellman or William F. Buckley orating at great length and with enormous erudition on the issues of the day, whether the subject was modern art,
- [Blu-ray: Long Way North](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-long-way-north/): Long Way North (Shout! Factory) is a gorgeous French-Danish animated feature about a 15-year-old girl from an aristocratic family in 1880s Saint Petersburg who flees her palatial home for the far north to search for the lost ship of her explorer grandfather Oloukine. He disappeared in his attempt to conquer the North Pole in the
- [Blu-ray: ‘His Girl Friday’ meets ‘The Front Page’ on The Criterion Collection](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-girl-friday-meets-front-page-criterion-collection/): His Girl Friday (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD) should really be listed as a double feature, for the “bonus” movie—a new edition of the original screen version of The Front Page, adapted from the snappy, cynical, double-barrel Broadway hit by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur—is not just a home video debut but a major discovery. The Front
- [Blu-ray: ‘Something Wild’ (1962) on The Criterion Collection](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-something-wild-1962-criterion-collection/): Not to be confused with the Jonathan Demme screwball comedy/thriller by the same name, the 1962 Something Wild (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD) is an unusually frank drama about a teenage girl recovering from rape. The film opens on the assault, a non-explicit scene that communicates both the violence of the rape and the terrible sense of
- [Review: Emily](https://parallax-view.org/review-emily/): In movies about relationships, the small details need to ring true. Emily, the feature length debut from director Ryan Graves, takes a tiny-by-design story and earnestly goes deep, exploring the destructive impulses, badly timed stabs at nobility, and increasingly mixed signals of a couple on the brink. Without showy declarations of intent or roof-raising histrionics,
- [The Offspring of Birth of a Nation](https://parallax-view.org/offspring-birth-nation/): D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation is inarguably one of the landmarks of American cinema. The distillation of the storytelling techniques, editing ideas, framing and visual composition, and nuanced approaches to performance that Griffith spent years exploring and experimenting with in short subjects and mid-length films, it was the longest and most ambitious American
- [Moments out of Time 2016](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time-2016/): Images, lines, gestures, moods from the year's films * Green Room: Hillside Astoria street, spike-haired dude texting at curb... * Death notice at hockey practice, Manchester by the Sea: at a distance, the rhythms of bruised recognition and awkward sympathy... * Thrilling camera follow in Hell or High Water as the brothers Howard race home
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of January 27](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-january-27/): “Men, and the occasional group of women, are consistently on the move in The Red and the White, and are just as frequently prevented a full and complete escape. Such a teasing freedom is part of the film’s caustically cruel wargame, and it is indicative of Jancsó’s stance on the futility and specious systematization of
- [Review: Julieta](https://parallax-view.org/review-julieta/): He is now 68, but in recent years Pedro Almodóvar hasn’t been making films like an old master. His astonishing The Skin I Live In (2011) blended identity politics with Frankenstein and The Island of Dr. Moreau, in a mix that apparently disturbed even his ardent fans (I think it may be one of his
- [Blu-ray: ‘Sudden Fear’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-sudden-fear/): Joan Crawford took charge of her career as she aged out of the ingénue roles that propelled her to stardom, developing stories and pursuing properties that offered strong characters for a mature woman. She gave herself a second act when she fought hard for Mildred Pierce (1945) at Warner Bros. and seven years later, as
- [Blu-ray: Laird Cregar is ‘The Lodger’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-laird-cregar-lodger/): Laird Cregar is The Lodger (1944) (Kino Lorber Studio Classics, Blu-ray) in the third screen adaptation of the thriller by Marie Belloc Lowndes (the most famous was the 1926 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock) set in London during the reign of Jack the Ripper. While the city panics in the wake of another murder of
- [Blu-ray: Clara Bow meets Gary Cooper in ‘Children of Divorce’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-clara-bow-meets-gary-cooper-children-divorce/): Children of Divorce (1927) (Flicker Alley, Blu-ray+DVD) is one of those silent films that isn’t exactly a classic but possesses an irresistible allure. The star power and cinematic charisma of Clara Bow, the definitive flapper of the silent era, and young Gary Cooper lights up this somewhat silly melodrama of the young, beautiful and idle
- [Blu-ray: John Huston’s ‘The Asphalt Jungle’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-john-hustons-asphalt-jungle/): The Asphalt Jungle (1950) (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD) is one of John Huston’s rare forays into the genre that would later be called film noir. His first, The Maltese Falcon (1941), helped set the template of the PI noir. Ten years later, working from an adaptation of the caper novel by W.R. Burnett scripted in collaboration
- [Review: The Public Eye](https://parallax-view.org/review-public-eye/): [Originally published in Movietone News 27, November 1973] The Public Eye begins with promise but finally has little to recommend it but some nice pictures of London. It is a sappy, soppy, misguided movie unlike anything I ever expected to see released under Sir Carol Reed's signature. The story concerns David, a dignified, intellectual British
- [Reimagining Sherlock Holmes](https://parallax-view.org/reimagining-sherlock-holmes/): It took four seasons of Sherlock, the BBC’s re-imagining of the world’s greatest detective for the modern digital world, for creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis to turn their “high-functioning sociopath” into a human being, not just a great man but a good one. But in the process they turned Arthur Conan Doyle’s well-ordered world
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of January 20](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-january-20/): “The widespread tendency to unambiguously reject Jew Suss is surely rooted in an assumption that its surface antisemitism was unambiguously accepted by German cinemagoers, who supposedly took Faber at face value. But is audience response ever so crudely schematic? Although one might have expected Harlan to at least go through the motions of making Faber
- [Review: 20th Century Women](https://parallax-view.org/review-20th-century-women/): There’s a talking dog in Beginners, the 2010 movie that won Christopher Plummer a supporting-actor Oscar. To be precise, the dog speaks in subtitles, which might make the premise easier, or possibly harder, to take. As a general rule I am not opposed to talking-canine scenarios; for instance, the title pet of the cult picture
- [Blu-ray/DVD: Train to Busan](https://parallax-view.org/blu-raydvd-train-busan/): You could call Train to Busan (South Korea, 2016) “Zombies on a Train”—it certainly makes a catchy logline and it frames the premise accurately and succinctly—but it reduces this fleet, fierce, unexpectedly human thriller to a mere gimmick. Apart from the slyly eerie prologue, the film opens without any hint of the viral rampage to
- [Blu-ray/DVD: Roger Corman’s ‘Death Race 2050’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-dvd-roger-corman-death-race-2050/): Death Race 2050 (2016) – After Paul W.S. Anderson’s humorless Death Race, his 2008 remake/reworking of the Roger Corman-produced cult movie Death Race 2000 (1975), there’s something oddly satisfying in getting a genuine remake produced by Corman himself in the impudent spirit of the original. Death Race 2050 is a modern B movie, produced directly
- [Review: Happy Mother's Day—Love, George](https://parallax-view.org/review-happy-mothers-day-love-george/): [Originally published in Movietone News 27, November 1973] The best thing about Happy Mother's Day—Love, George is some yeah-that's-the-way-it-looks nighttime photography by Walter Lassally. A minor technical footnote, to be sure, and not enough to redeem the sloppy ugliness of Darren McGavin's directorial debut. The plot is very confused, and the leaking of that plot
- [Review: Payday](https://parallax-view.org/review-payday/): [Originally published in Movietone News 27, November 1973] Probably what the people who made Payday had in mind was an exercise in a sort of cinematic new journalism—an objective, but highly commercial, look at life as it is played out on the highways and in the hangouts of the country-western music circuit. Certainly producer Ralph
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of January 13](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-january-13/): “Mark Twain said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.” The same goes for visual compositions. In this Front Page, the right shots take the place of the almost right shots—and the result is galvanizing. When the lens
- [Review: Notes on Blindness](https://parallax-view.org/review-notes-blindness/): Visually depicting sightlessness is a tough task for even the most inventive of moviemakers. (Derek Jarman’s 1993 film Blue, in which Tilda Swinton and others talk over a hypnotically static shade of the title color, remains the experimental gold standard.) The re-created documentary Notes on Blindness takes a distinctly proactive approach to this dilemma, utilizing
- [Review: Paterson](https://parallax-view.org/review-paterson/): If Paterson, New Jersey, already seems overblessed with great poets—William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg both laid claim to the place—Jim Jarmusch believes it may have room for one more. In Jarmusch’s Paterson, the bard in question is a bus driver, an agreeable young man who organizes his life according to a timetable. He has
- [Review: I Could Never Have Sex with Any Man Who Has So Little Regard for My Husband](https://parallax-view.org/review-never-sex-man-little-regard-husband/): [Originally published in Movietone News 27, November 1973] I Could Never Have Sex with Any Man Who Has So Little Regard for My Husband is a private party that never gets off the ground for the characters or the audience, although it may have been lotsa laughs for the people who made it. I haven't
- [Review: Mystery of the Wax Museum](https://parallax-view.org/review-mystery-wax-museum-1933/): [Originally published in Movietone News 27, November 1973] For years recorded as lost by more than one film history, the original Mystery of the Wax Museum (remade in the Fifties as House of Wax) suddenly popped up on channel 13's Dr. Zingrr hour with its 1933 Technicolor intact, even. Or perhaps not so intact: frequently
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of January 6](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-friday-january-6/): “Pagnol’s roots as a novelist and a playwright show in his intricate understanding of networks, of crosscurrents that whisk the characters away from seemingly nearby finish lines. He has an astonishing grasp of destiny, not as a sentimentally celestial branch of predetermination, but as a series of prisms fashioned by the push and pull between emotion
- [Review: Hidden Figures](https://parallax-view.org/review-hidden-figures/): If it were more purely about the workplace and less about the homefront, Hidden Figures might have an even stronger case for shining a light on unknown American history. The history in this case surrounds NASA and the lives of three black women who set a new standard for the status of African-Americans in the
- [Parallax View's Best of 2016](https://parallax-view.org/parallax-view-best-of-2016/): Welcome 2017 with one last look back at the best releases of 2016, as seen by the Parallax View contributors and friends and a few special invitations. Sean Axmaker 1. Elle (Paul Verhoeven) 2. Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) 3. Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan) 4. Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie) 5. Sully
- [Best Blu-ray & DVD releases of 2016](https://parallax-view.org/best-blu-ray-dvd-releases-2016/): We've been hearing people pronounce the death of DVD and Blu-ray for years now. You'd never know it from the astonishing wealth of Blu-ray debuts, restored movies, and lovingly-produced special editions in 2016. The sales numbers are way down from a decade ago, of course, thanks in large part to the demise of the video
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of Friday, December 30](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-friday-december-30/): The new issue of Lola has finished rolling out, with Laura Mulvey on Lola Montès (“In one remarkable scene at the centre of Lola Montès, Ophüls plainly lays out the film’s key theme, while his mise en scène and the characters’ choreography present, equally explicitly, a formal statement on cinema and on CinemaScope”), Yusef Sayed on
- [Merry Christmas from Parallax View](https://parallax-view.org/merry-christmas-from-parallax-view/): Merry Christmas from Parallax View
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of Friday, December 23](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-friday-december-23/): The new issue of cléo arrives, with a focus on firsts. The theme is treated variously by the contributors, from Erin Delaney’s appreciation of the assault on heteronormality in the Wachowski’s Bound, particularly in contrast with other lesbian-themed noirs of the period (“While Basic Instinct is preoccupied by the fear that sexual performance may indeed
- [Robert Horton on The Finest Films of 2016](https://parallax-view.org/robert-horton-finest-films-2016/): While everybody else wonders whether 2016 was the worst year since 1968, or simply the worst year ever, the conversation in the world of cinema has brightened of late. Yes, for much of the movie year, 2016 was declared calamitous. Maybe movies were dead, or maybe were they merely much worse than television. And then
- [Review: Elle](https://parallax-view.org/review-elle/): Paul Verhoeven's American phase was too nasty to last, really, with movies like RoboCop and Starship Troopers giving the audience what they initially thought they wanted, and then cranking up the vulgarity to hysterically uncomfortable levels. (Even Hollow Man, the Dutch director’s weakest project, had a main character who pervs out immediately upon receiving superpowers.)
- [Review: Walking Tall](https://parallax-view.org/review-walking-tall/): [Originally published in Movietone News 27, November 1973] "[Karlson's] special brand of lynch hysteria establishes such an outrageous moral imbalance that the most unthinkable violence releases the audience from its helpless passivity." Andrew Sarris's five-year-old assessment of Phil Karlson's work up until that time anticipates exactly what makes Walking Tall so frighteningly effective and yet
- [Review: The Mackintosh Man](https://parallax-view.org/review-mackintosh-man/): [Originally published in Movietone News 27, November 1973] John Huston's newest, a spy thriller of sorts, had a short first run downtown and has slipped almost unnoticed to the neighborhood circuit. It's just as well. Reviewers have criticized The Mackintosh Man's convoluted plot, but the principal weakness is a slowness of pace which allows even
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of Friday, December 16](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-friday-december-16/): “Chronicling the inception, rise, and demise of Augusto Pinochet's 17-year dictatorship in the director's home country, Pablo Larraín's Chile Trilogy announced the emergence of a major auteur. In contrast to his countryman Patricio Guzmán's mournful, poetic approach to the same territory, Larraín — who hails from a wealthy right-wing family once associated with the Pinochet
- [Review: La La Land](https://parallax-view.org/review-la-la-land/): It aspires to gossamer and moonbeams, to bygone eras of jazz and black-and-white movies, to Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse. It has scenes of people breaking into song and dance in the middle of dialogue. They used to call these musicals. How can any movie lover, or any civilized person really, be against La La
- [Great Restorations, Revelations, and Debuts of 2016](https://parallax-view.org/great-restorations-revelations-debuts-2016/): It's been a fine year for film history rediscovered—and rendered newly accessible. We live in a culture with unprecedented access to movies—through DVD and Blu-ray, streaming subscription services, and SVOD. And it’s not just new and recent films and TV programming; classic Hollywood films, international movies, documentaries, experimental film, and even hundreds of silents, many
- [Myrna Loy: Hollywood Loyalty](https://parallax-view.org/myrna-loy-hollywood-loyalty/): Myrna Loy is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month for December. Here's a bio written two decades ago. It's all still true. - RTJ Myrna Loy Born as Myrna Williams, August 2, 1905; Raidersburg (near Helena), Montana Death: December 14, 1993; New York, New York Myrna Loy was a Montana girl who broke out
- [Review: Miss Sloane](https://parallax-view.org/review-miss-sloane/): At the heart of Miss Sloane—and a cool heart it is—lies a question. Why does the title character walk out on her lucrative career as one of D.C.’s highest-paid lobbyists to join an underfunded nonprofit in its quixotic attempt at changing some gun laws? The question keeps the movie from falling into the easy do-gooder
- [Review: Electra Glide in Blue](https://parallax-view.org/review-electra-glide-blue/): [Originally published in Movietone News 27, November 1973] Film directors have come from many backgrounds, in the past more so than today; but with Electra Glide in Blue a new source has been tapped. James William Guercio is a prominent record producer. The influence of his background in the recording industry becomes immediately apparent when,
- [Review: Charley Varrick](https://parallax-view.org/review-charley-varrick/): [Originally published in Movietone News 27, November 1973] The new Siegel is characteristically clean, fascinatingly and unfussily detailed, beautifully paced—a model of movie craftsmanship and a pointed affront to those slovenly wrecking derbies and indiscriminate bloodbaths that have been passing for contemporary action thrillers the last year or so. Indeed, to anyone who has alternately
- [Review: Old Stone](https://parallax-view.org/review-old-stone/): The spirit of film noir lives on in Johnny Ma’s Old Stone, a downward spiral set in contemporary China. In the outline of the classic noir, a person makes one wrong move which sets in motion an inexorable series of disastrous events: Fred MacMurray sells a fishy insurance policy to Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity;
- [#Noirvember Blu-ray: The rural noir of 'On Dangerous Ground' and 'Road House'](https://parallax-view.org/noirvember-blu-ray-rural-noir-dangerous-ground-road-house/): On Dangerous Ground (Warner Archive, Blu-ray) (1952), directed by Nicholas Ray from a script he developed with A.I. Bezzerides and producer John Houseman, opens on the urgent yet fractured dramatic score by Bernard Herrmann, a theme that rushes forward anxiously, pauses with quieter instruments, then jumps again as we watch the nocturnal city streets in
- [#Noirvember Blu-ray: The urban noir of ‘I Wake Up Screaming’ and ‘Cry of the City’](https://parallax-view.org/noirvember-blu-ray-urban-noir-wake-screaming-cry-city/): I Wake Up Screaming (Kino Lorber Studio Classics, Blu-ray) is not just one of the great movie titles of classic cinema, it is one of the films that established the distinctive style and attitude of film noir, from the blast of a headline shouting BEAUTIFUL MODEL FOUND MURDERED to the third degree given to swaggering
- [#Noirvember Blu-ray: The docu-noir of ‘Boomerang’ and ‘The House on 92nd Street’](https://parallax-view.org/noirvember-blu-ray-docu-noir-boomerang-house-92nd-street/): The House on 92nd Street (Kino Lorber Studio Classics, Blu-ray), a 1945 World War II espionage thriller based on a real life FBI case, launched what would become the semi-documentary strain of film noir. It opens with the authoritative narration of Reed Hadley (uncredited but omnipresent in the genre) insisting on that this is an
- [Review: Rules Don’t Apply](https://parallax-view.org/review-rules-dont-apply/): Warren Beatty turns 80 next year, and he’s been talking about directing a film on Howard Hughes for decades. So we’re allowed to assume that Rules Don’t Apply might have the air of a grand opus about it, that it would wear the sobriety suitable to an Oscar-winning filmmaker and elder Hollywood royalty. And that
- [Review: The Mattei Affair](https://parallax-view.org/review-mattei-affair/): [Originally published in Movietone News 28, December 1973] The Mattei Affair affords one of the year's most peculiar film experiences. I think most people who see it will agree with that, whether or not their personal reactions to the picture closely resemble my own (possibly very subjective) response. For about half the film's running time
- [Blu-ray: ‘Private Property’ rediscovered and restored](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-private-property-rediscovered-restored/): Private Property (Cinelicious, Blu-ray+DVD) – Put this 1960 film in the "Lost and Found" category. The directorial debut by Leslie Stevens, a playwright and screenwriter and protégé of Orson Welles, it's a neat little sexually-charged psychological thriller set in the sunny California culture of affluence and trophy wives and drifting hitchhikers crossing the stratified social
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of Friday, November 18, plus Seattle Screens](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-friday-november-18-plus-seattle-screens/): “And do not, please do not, get him started on the people who approach him after the show with a Sling Blade DVD to sign. You just watched him perform his heart out for you and you are going to present him with a Sling Blade DVD? ‘Sure, I'll sign your Sling Blade DVD,’ he
- [Review: Loving](https://parallax-view.org/review-loving/): A United States where ignorance has the upper hand, where leaders revel in their bigotry, where average Americans taunt each other with proud, unfiltered fury. The year is 1958—what did you think I was referring to?—a time when Richard and Mildred Loving became criminals because of their marriage. They are the subjects of Jeff Nichols’
- [Review: Ixcanul](https://parallax-view.org/review-ixcanul/): Watching people simply go about their business can somehow be one of the most fascinating things in the movies. The Berlin Award–winning Ixcanul (Volcano), Guatemala's entry for last year's Oscars, is an absorbing, unpretentious look at a culture not often shown, whether capturing how the characters can carry a forest's worth of firewood on their
- [Review: Aquarius](https://parallax-view.org/review-aquarius/): Aquarius is large but intimate, political but personal; it’s frank in its ambition to explore The Way We Live Today, but also mysterious and elusive. I’ve seen few films this year more fascinating. The second feature by Brazilian writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho (Neighborhood Sounds), this movie clocks in at a leisurely 142 minutes—some urgent, some
- [Seattle Screens: Italy! Morocco! Wiseman!](https://parallax-view.org/seattle-screens-italy-morocco-wiseman/): The 8th Cinema Italian Style series plays through the week at SIFF Cinema Uptown. It opens on Thursday, November 10 with Paolo Virzi's Like Crazy with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and ends a week later on Thursday, November 17 with closing night feature Opposites Attract, a romantic comedy directed by Max Croci, who is scheduled to
- [Blu-ray: Martin Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ at 40](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-martin-scorseses-taxi-driver-40/): Taxi Driver: 40th Anniversary Edition (Sony, Blu-ray) Martin Scorsese’ incendiary 1976 masterpiece of alienation and anger and urban anxiety may be the most maverick vision of seventies American cinema. It is certainly one of the most visceral portraits of the American urban underbelly ever put on film, a movie bathed in blood as much as
- ['2001: A Space Odyssey' in Image and Music](https://parallax-view.org/music-2001-space-odyssey/): [This essay was originally published as the liner-notes booklet for the Rhino Records / Turner Classic Movies Original Motion Picture Soundtrack CD to 2001: A Space Odyssey, released in 1996 by Turner Entertainment Company. Portions of the essay also later appeared in a souvenir booklet included in the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY COLLECTOR'S EDITION DVD
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of Friday, November 4](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-friday-november-4/): “Who makes movies like this? And why aren’t more movies like this? Like Tarantino’s direction itself—stylish, cool, tight, but also relaxed, taking its time, in profile close-up, to show Ordell thinking, or Robert De Niro’s hilarious but deadly Louis, trying to figure out the phone, or Bridget Fonda’s stoner beach bunny sweetness mixed with amusingly
- [Review: Moonlight](https://parallax-view.org/review-moonlight/): There are strong, original things in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, and there are things that would fit in a cautionary ABC Afterschool Special. Sometimes the film’s style is muscular and striking, and sometimes it’s flat. But Jenkins got one thing right: He really knows how to build. By the time Moonlight reaches its third and final
- [Seattle Screens: Black and Chrome and Christine Chubbuck](https://parallax-view.org/seattle-screens-black-chrome-christine-chubbuck/): Sure, Marvel's Doctor Strange, Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge, and the animated toy musical comedy Trolls are competing for audiences this weekend, but there's a lot more out there. Moonlight, one of the most acclaimed American films of the year, opens at The Egyptian. Robert Horton reviews it for Seattle Weekly. Mad Max: Fury Road Black
- [Interview: Linas Phillips, Nonthreatening Triple Threat](https://parallax-view.org/interview-linas-phillips-nonthreatening-triple-threat/): Linas Phillips is probably better known to fans of American indie cinema as an actor than as a filmmaker. A graduate of New York University’s Experimental Theatre Wing, he co-starred with Jay Duplass in Manson Family Vacation (2015) as the Charles Manson-obsessed character who drags his estranged brother on a tour of Mason murder sites.
- [Review: Bang the Drum Slowly](https://parallax-view.org/review-bang-drum-slowly/): [Originally published in Movietone News 27, November 1973] What the reviewers have said about Bang the Drum Slowly avoiding the overwrought sentimentalism of a Brian's Song or a Love Story is only partly true. But the film does offer honest schmaltz as a viable alternative to the tasteless kitsch of previous films about dying young.
- [Blu-ray: Giallo! Restored Italian horrors on Arrow, Synapse and more](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-giallo-restored-italian-horrors-arrow-synapse/): Blood and Black Lace (Arrow/MVD, Blu-ray+DVD) What Have You Done to Solange? (Arrow/MVD, Blu-ray+DVD) Death Walks Twice: Two Films by Luciano Ercoli (Arrow/MVD, Blu-ray+DVD) Killer Dames: Two Gothic Chillers by Emilio P. Miraglia (Arrow/MVD, Blu-ray+DVD) Edgar Allan Poe’s Black Cats: Two Adaptations by Sergio Martino & Lucio Fulci (Arrow/MVD, Blu-ray+DVD) The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (Olive,
- [The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of Friday, October 28](https://parallax-view.org/view-beyond-parallax-reads-week-friday-october-28/): “In retrospect, the authentic set of the film looks mostly unreal, and in spite of minute attention to details, even by the 1920s standards, it is a décor which looks like décor. It has an MGM quality to it. The camera never makes any attempt to hide the fresh paint on the walls (in reality,
- [Review: The Handmaiden](https://parallax-view.org/review-the-handmaiden/): Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden (South Korea) leaves behind the austerity and cool tone of his superb but unheralded American debut Stoker to return to the intense imagery, twisting narratives, perverse subcultures, and elevated emotions of his Sympathy trilogy. The story of con artists in 1930s Korea, adapted from the British novel "Fingersmith" by Sarah Waters
- [Seattle Screens Halloween weekend: 'The Hunger,' 'The Pit,' 'Rocky Horror,' and Carpenter's 'Halloween'](https://parallax-view.org/seattle-screens-halloween-weekend-hunger-pit-rocky-horror-carpenters-halloween/): Park Chan-Wook's The Handmaiden, a con artist scheme by way of a steamy erotic thriller, opens at multiple theaters this week, including SIFF Cinema Uptown and Guild 45. The Canadian coming of age comedy Closet Monster plays for a week at SIFF Cinema Egyptian. Miss Hokusai, an animated Japanese feature from director Keiichi Hara and
- [Review: Demon](https://parallax-view.org/review-demon/): Watching another culture’s horror movies can provide a fascinating glimpse into what makes them collectively tick. The Polish Demon offers an intriguing, deceptively comedic spin on the dybbuk legend, while also exploring an unthinkable whopper of a party foul. While the second half’s tendency towards small-scale conversations may occasionally betray the script’s origin on the stage, late
- [Blu-ray/DVD: Robert Altman's 'McCabe & Mrs. Miller'](https://parallax-view.org/blu-raydvd-robert-altmans-mccabe-mrs-miller/): McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD), Robert Altman’s third film since staking out his claim on 1970s cinema with M*A*S*H (1970), turns the western myth into a metaphor for the fantasy of the American Dream colliding with the power of big business. Warren Beatty is John McCabe, a drifting gambler who rides into the
- [Review: American Graffiti](https://parallax-view.org/review-american-graffiti/): [Originally published in Movietone News 27, November 1973] American Graffiti begins with a shot of Curt, a recent high school graduate, driving up to Mel's Drive-in, and it ends with Curt watching a white Thunderbird from his airplane seat as he goes off to college. Structurally speaking, therefore, the film revolves around him and his
- [Blu-ray/DVD: Takeshi Kitano’s ‘Violent Cop’ and ‘Boiling Point’](https://parallax-view.org/blu-ray-dvd-takeshi-kitano-violent-cop-and-boiling-point/): Violent Cop (Film Movement, Blu-ray, DVD) Boiling Point (Film Movement, Blu-ray, DVD) Takeshi Kitano has a way of making stillness into tension in his crime films. In the opening shot of Violent Cop, Kitano’s 1990 directorial debut, the camera holds on the smiling face of a toothless derelict. Like a pebble dropping into a pond
- ['Memento Mori' and the Terrible Melancholy of Korean Horror](https://parallax-view.org/memento-mori-terrible-melancholy-korean-horror/): The rise of Asian horror in the late nineties was built on a different recipe than the Freddy and Jason knock-offs and post-Blair Witch found-footage horrors of American movies. After the cycle of gore films of the eighties ran its course in both Japan and Hong Kong, horror was relegated to the made-for-video industry (known
- [VIFF 2016: Con artists, poets, and life on the streets](https://parallax-view.org/viff-2016-con-artists-poets-life-streets/): I still marvel at how the Vancouver International Film Festival seems to be one of the best-kept secrets on the West Coast. Opening a few weeks after Toronto, it is almost concurrent with the New York Film Festival, which makes headlines with the official American premieres of some of the season's most anticipated films. Many
- [Godzilla Evolution](https://parallax-view.org/godzilla-evolution/): Shin Godzilla, the first new Japanese Godzilla film in twelve years, stomped into the record books as Japan’s top moneymaking live-action film of 2016, and the highest grossing Godzilla film ever, but it practically snuck into American theaters last week, staking out one or two showings a day in urban multiplexes with practically no advertising
- [Seattle Screens: Japanese horror in 35mm and 'The Battle of Algiers' restored](https://parallax-view.org/seattle-screens-japanese-horror-35mm-battle-algiers-restored/): The Japanese horror classic Kuroneko (Black Cat) (1968), directed by Kaneto Shindo, is both an eerie ghost story and a ferocious horror tale of righteous revenge. Set in feudal Japan, in a bamboo forest perpetually shrouded in fog and shadow as ethereal as the ghosts that seem to float through it, the film chronicles the

## Pages

- [Moments out of Time](https://parallax-view.org/moments-out-of-time/): Images, lines, gestures, moods from the films of the years... In 1971, Richard T. Jameson and Kathleen Murphy offered the readers of Movietone News a different kind of celebration of the best of the year. In addition to the traditional "Top Ten" lists that every critic is apparently obligated by law to provide, they attempted
- [Issues 60-67](https://parallax-view.org/movietone-news/movietone-news-page-2/): Movietone News Double Issue No. 60-61: February 5, 1979 "A privilege to work in films": Sam Peckinpah among Friends (published on Parallax View here) The Seattle Film Society in conversation with the director, plus: The Ballad of Cable Hogue reviewed (published on Parallax View here) By Samuel Fuller Days of Purgatory (published on Parallax View
- [Issues 50-59](https://parallax-view.org/movietone-news/movietone-news-issues-50-59/): Movietone News No. 50, June 28, 1976 Hey, Mom, Where's My Suicide Note Collection? (published on Parallax View here) Samuel Fuller interviewed By Richard Thompson "When it's night time ... ”: Myth and the Geography of the Unconscious in I Shot Jesse James (published on Parallax View here) By Rick Hermann The Steel Helmet: "I've
- [Issues 40-49](https://parallax-view.org/movietone-news/issues-40-49/): Movietone News No. 40: April 13, 1975 How It Is The dark comedy of Only Angels Have Wings By Peter Hogue Demonology Energy in Scarface and His Girl Friday By Kevin Cooney People Who Need People Collaboration as a way of life in To Have and Have Not (published on Parallax View here) By Richard
- [Issues 30-39](https://parallax-view.org/movietone-news/issues-30-39/): Movietone News No. 30, March 1974 Imitation of Life (published on Parallax View here) A comprehensive interpretation of Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the masterpiece of the classic era in science-fiction cinema By Robert C. Cumbow plus A Note on Style (published on Parallax View here) Black humor, raked angles, montage—more on Invasion
- [Issues 20-29](https://parallax-view.org/movietone-news/issues-20-29/): Movietone News No. 20, January 1973 No Time for Playtime Being about as sordid an account as one could ask for of the royal screwing of one comedic genius and various well-meaning exhibitors By James N. Selvidge Jour de Fete Memories of a lost classic By James N. Selvidge On the Rise Griffith, Capra, Cukor,
- [Movietone News](https://parallax-view.org/movietone-news/): "The best publication on film in the English language" Molly Haskell Not to be confused with the famous Twentieth Century Fox newsreel series of the same name, Movietone News began as a newsletter from The Seattle Film Society in 1971 and soon turned into a vibrant little film magazine that published out of Seattle, under
- [About Parallax View](https://parallax-view.org/about/): Parallax View is a loose collective of like-minded professional film writers in the Seattle area. We like to get together and talk about cinema. This site is a place to share some of those discussions, as well as original and archival essays, reviews, interviews and other thoughts on movies, with a wider audience. And hopefully
- [Privacy Policy](https://parallax-view.org/privacy-policy/): Who we are Our website address is: https://parallax-view.org.org/. What personal data we collect and why we collect it Comments When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymized string created from
- [Parallax View Presents](https://parallax-view.org/parallax-view-presents/): An archive of Parallax View "Special Sections" Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on May 6, 1915. This week marks his centenary: the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of the most influential, ambitious, unique, and complicated filmmakers in the American cinema, or any cinema, for that matter. The occasion has been celebrated
- [Seattle Film Critics Awards](https://parallax-view.org/seattle-film-critics-awards/): In 2002, a group of Seattle film professionals, enthusiasts, teachers, and critics formed Parallax View, a small film society whose goal was to champion the cause of film literacy, foster public discussion of the place of movies in society, and promote the serious, sometimes delirious cause of film as art. Founding members included (in alphabetical

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- [Bernardo Bertolucci](https://parallax-view.org/category/directors/bernardo-bertolucci/)
- [by Claudia Gorbman](https://parallax-view.org/category/contributors/by-claudia-gorbman/)
- [Obituary / Remembrance](https://parallax-view.org/category/obituary-remembrance/)
- [capsules](https://parallax-view.org/category/capsules/)
- [by RC Dale](https://parallax-view.org/category/contributors/by-rc-dale/)
- [Oscars](https://parallax-view.org/category/oscars/)
- [Framing Pictures](https://parallax-view.org/category/framing-pictures/)
- [SIFF](https://parallax-view.org/category/siff/)
- [Kathryn Bigelow](https://parallax-view.org/category/directors/kathryn-bigelow/)
- [biography](https://parallax-view.org/category/biography/)
- [Francis Ford Coppola](https://parallax-view.org/category/directors/francis-ford-coppola/)
- [Lynn Shelton](https://parallax-view.org/category/directors/lynn-shelton/)
- [2000 Eyes](https://parallax-view.org/category/2000-eyes/)
- [The Seasoned Ticket](https://parallax-view.org/category/the-seasoned-ticket/)
- [What to Stream](https://parallax-view.org/category/what-to-stream/)
- [Jean-Luc Godard](https://parallax-view.org/category/directors/jean-luc-godard/)
- [David Lynch](https://parallax-view.org/category/directors/david-lynch/)
- [Film series](https://parallax-view.org/category/film-series/)

## Tags

- [The Parallax View](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-parallax-view/)
- [Tropic Thunder](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tropic-thunder/)
- [George Lucas](https://parallax-view.org/tag/george-lucas/)
- [Star Wars](https://parallax-view.org/tag/star-wars/)
- [Don Quixote](https://parallax-view.org/tag/don-quixote/)
- [Gary Graver](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gary-graver/)
- [Jess Franco](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jess-franco/)
- [Hamlet 2](https://parallax-view.org/tag/hamlet-2/)
- [Michael Winterbottom](https://parallax-view.org/tag/michael-winterbottom/)
- [Steve Coogan](https://parallax-view.org/tag/steve-coogan/)
- [David Mamet](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-mamet/)
- [Redbelt](https://parallax-view.org/tag/redbelt/)
- [Budd Boetticher](https://parallax-view.org/tag/budd-boetticher/)
- [Orson Welles](https://parallax-view.org/tag/orson-welles/)
- [Seven Men From Now](https://parallax-view.org/tag/seven-men-from-now/)
- [The Tall T](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-tall-t/)
- [Touch of Evil](https://parallax-view.org/tag/touch-of-evil/)
- [Ira Sachs](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ira-sachs/)
- [Married Life](https://parallax-view.org/tag/married-life/)
- [Alan Ball](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alan-ball/)
- [Six Feet Under](https://parallax-view.org/tag/six-feet-under/)
- [Towelhead](https://parallax-view.org/tag/towelhead/)
- [Battle in Seattle](https://parallax-view.org/tag/battle-in-seattle/)
- [Stuart Townsend](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stuart-townsend/)
- [Charles Boyer](https://parallax-view.org/tag/charles-boyer/)
- [Danielle Darrieux](https://parallax-view.org/tag/danielle-darrieux/)
- [Max Ophuls](https://parallax-view.org/tag/max-ophuls/)
- [The Earrings of Madame de...](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-earrings-of-madame-de/)
- [Vittorio De Sica](https://parallax-view.org/tag/vittorio-de-sica/)
- [Apocalypse Now](https://parallax-view.org/tag/apocalypse-now/)
- [Brewster McCloud](https://parallax-view.org/tag/brewster-mccloud/)
- [M*A*S*H](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mash/)
- [McCabe and Mrs. Miller](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mccabe-and-mrs-miller/)
- [Nashville](https://parallax-view.org/tag/nashville/)
- [The Conversation](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-conversation/)
- [The Godfather](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-godfather/)
- [The Godfather Part II](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-godfather-part-ii/)
- [Dennis Hopper](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dennis-hopper/)
- [Francis Ford Coppola](https://parallax-view.org/tag/francis-ford-coppola/)
- [John Milius](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-milius/)
- [Marlon Brando](https://parallax-view.org/tag/marlon-brando/)
- [Martin Sheen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/martin-sheen/)
- [Robert Duvall](https://parallax-view.org/tag/robert-duvall/)
- [Movietone News 43](https://parallax-view.org/tag/movietone-news-43/)
- [Robert Altman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/robert-altman/)
- [Cradle Will Rock](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cradle-will-rock/)
- [The Lucky Ones](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-lucky-ones/)
- [Tim Robbins](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tim-robbins/)
- [Janet Leigh](https://parallax-view.org/tag/janet-leigh/)
- [Charlton Heston](https://parallax-view.org/tag/charlton-heston/)
- [Bob O'Neil](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bob-oneil/)
- [Vertigo](https://parallax-view.org/tag/vertigo/)
- [Rick Schmidlin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/rick-schmidlin/)
- [Walter Murch](https://parallax-view.org/tag/walter-murch/)
- [Albert Zugsmith](https://parallax-view.org/tag/albert-zugsmith/)
- [Chinatown](https://parallax-view.org/tag/chinatown/)
- [Faye Dunaway](https://parallax-view.org/tag/faye-dunaway/)
- [Jack Nicholson](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jack-nicholson/)
- [Movietone News 33](https://parallax-view.org/tag/movietone-news-33/)
- [Roman Polanski](https://parallax-view.org/tag/roman-polanski/)
- [The Big Sleep](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-big-sleep/)
- [Jonathan Demme](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jonathan-demme/)
- [Rachel Getting Married](https://parallax-view.org/tag/rachel-getting-married/)
- [Barrier](https://parallax-view.org/tag/barrier/)
- [Jerzy Skolimowski](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jerzy-skolimowski/)
- [Burt Kwouk](https://parallax-view.org/tag/burt-kwouk/)
- [Deep End](https://parallax-view.org/tag/deep-end/)
- [Diana Dors](https://parallax-view.org/tag/diana-dors/)
- [Jane Asher](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jane-asher/)
- [John Moulder Brown](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-moulder-brown/)
- [Karl-Michael Vogler](https://parallax-view.org/tag/karl-michael-vogler/)
- [La Ronde](https://parallax-view.org/tag/la-ronde/)
- [La Signora di tutti](https://parallax-view.org/tag/la-signora-di-tutti/)
- [Letter From An Unknown Woman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/letter-from-an-unknown-woman/)
- [Lola Montes](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lola-montes/)
- [Bernard Herrmann](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bernard-herrmann/)
- [Jerry Goldsmith](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jerry-goldsmith/)
- [John Carpenter](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-carpenter/)
- [Alex Reid](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alex-reid/)
- [MyAnna Buring](https://parallax-view.org/tag/myanna-buring/)
- [Natalie Mendoza](https://parallax-view.org/tag/natalie-mendoza/)
- [Neil Marshall](https://parallax-view.org/tag/neil-marshall/)
- [Nora-Jane Noone](https://parallax-view.org/tag/nora-jane-noone/)
- [Saskia Mulder](https://parallax-view.org/tag/saskia-mulder/)
- [Shauna Macdonald](https://parallax-view.org/tag/shauna-macdonald/)
- [The Descent](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-descent/)
- [George Romero](https://parallax-view.org/tag/george-romero/)
- [Land of the Dead](https://parallax-view.org/tag/land-of-the-dead/)
- [Night of the Living Dead](https://parallax-view.org/tag/night-of-the-living-dead/)
- [Exorcist: The Beginning](https://parallax-view.org/tag/exorcist-the-beginning/)
- [Paul Schrader](https://parallax-view.org/tag/paul-schrader/)
- [Renny Harlin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/renny-harlin/)
- [The Last Temptation of Christ](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-last-temptation-of-christ/)
- [Black Sabbath](https://parallax-view.org/tag/black-sabbath/)
- [Black Sunday](https://parallax-view.org/tag/black-sunday/)
- [Blood and Black Lace](https://parallax-view.org/tag/blood-and-black-lace/)
- [Danger: Diabolik](https://parallax-view.org/tag/danger-diabolik/)
- [giallo](https://parallax-view.org/tag/giallo/)
- [Kill Baby Kill](https://parallax-view.org/tag/kill-baby-kill/)
- [Lisa and The Devil](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lisa-and-the-devil/)
- [Mario Bava](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mario-bava/)
- [Planet of the Vampires](https://parallax-view.org/tag/planet-of-the-vampires/)
- [The Whip and the Body](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-whip-and-the-body/)
- [Twitch of the Death Nerve](https://parallax-view.org/tag/twitch-of-the-death-nerve/)
- [Dario Argento](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dario-argento/)
- [Lamberto Bava](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lamberto-bava/)
- [Lucio Fulci](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lucio-fulci/)
- [Michele Soavi](https://parallax-view.org/tag/michele-soavi/)
- [Pupi Avati](https://parallax-view.org/tag/pupi-avati/)
- [Ruggero Deodato](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ruggero-deodato/)
- [Birth](https://parallax-view.org/tag/birth/)
- [Jonathan Glazer](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jonathan-glazer/)
- [Stanley Kubrick](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stanley-kubrick/)
- [Blue Velvet](https://parallax-view.org/tag/blue-velvet/)
- [David Lynch](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-lynch/)
- [Dune](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dune/)
- [Eraserhead](https://parallax-view.org/tag/eraserhead/)
- [Inland Empire](https://parallax-view.org/tag/inland-empire/)
- [Lost Highway](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lost-highway/)
- [Mulholland Dr.](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mulholland-dr/)
- [The Elephant Man](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-elephant-man/)
- [The Straight Story](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-straight-story/)
- [Twin Peaks](https://parallax-view.org/tag/twin-peaks/)
- [Wild at Heart](https://parallax-view.org/tag/wild-at-heart/)
- [Ben Affleck](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ben-affleck/)
- [Gone Baby Gone](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gone-baby-gone/)
- [Dawn of the Dead](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dawn-of-the-dead/)
- [A History of Violence](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-history-of-violence/)
- [eXistenZ](https://parallax-view.org/tag/existenz/)
- [Spider](https://parallax-view.org/tag/spider/)
- [The Fly](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-fly/)
- [Videodrome](https://parallax-view.org/tag/videodrome/)
- [Comanche Station](https://parallax-view.org/tag/comanche-station/)
- [Randolph Scott](https://parallax-view.org/tag/randolph-scott/)
- [Ride Lonesome](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ride-lonesome/)
- [Burt Kennedy](https://parallax-view.org/tag/burt-kennedy/)
- [Buchanan Rides Alone](https://parallax-view.org/tag/buchanan-rides-alone/)
- [Decision at Sundown](https://parallax-view.org/tag/decision-at-sundown/)
- [Westbound](https://parallax-view.org/tag/westbound/)
- [A Time for Dying](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-time-for-dying/)
- [Arruza](https://parallax-view.org/tag/arruza/)
- [The Bullfighter and the Lady](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-bullfighter-and-the-lady/)
- [Maverick](https://parallax-view.org/tag/maverick/)
- [Red Ball Express](https://parallax-view.org/tag/red-ball-express/)
- [Seminole](https://parallax-view.org/tag/seminole/)
- [The Killer is Loose](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-killer-is-loose/)
- [The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-rise-and-fall-of-legs-diamond/)
- [Kevin Smith](https://parallax-view.org/tag/kevin-smith/)
- [Seth Rogen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/seth-rogen/)
- [Zack and Miri Make a Porno](https://parallax-view.org/tag/zack-and-miri-make-a-porno/)
- [A Christmas Tale](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-christmas-tale/)
- [Arnaud Desplechin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/arnaud-desplechin/)
- [A Farewell To Arms](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-farewell-to-arms/)
- [Bad Girl](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bad-girl/)
- [Frank Borzage](https://parallax-view.org/tag/frank-borzage/)
- [History Is Made At Night](https://parallax-view.org/tag/history-is-made-at-night/)
- [Little Man What Now?](https://parallax-view.org/tag/little-man-what-now/)
- [Man's Castle](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mans-castle/)
- [Mannequin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mannequin/)
- [Moonrise](https://parallax-view.org/tag/moonrise/)
- [Seventh Heaven](https://parallax-view.org/tag/seventh-heaven/)
- [Strange Cargo](https://parallax-view.org/tag/strange-cargo/)
- [Street Angel](https://parallax-view.org/tag/street-angel/)
- [The Mortal Storm](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-mortal-storm/)
- [The River](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-river/)
- [Three Comrades](https://parallax-view.org/tag/three-comrades/)
- [Frank Miller](https://parallax-view.org/tag/frank-miller/)
- [The Spirit](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-spirit/)
- [Will Eisner](https://parallax-view.org/tag/will-eisner/)
- [Doubt](https://parallax-view.org/tag/doubt/)
- [John Patrick Shanley](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-patrick-shanley/)
- [Meryl Streep](https://parallax-view.org/tag/meryl-streep/)
- [Philip Seymour Hoffman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/philip-seymour-hoffman/)
- [Blast Of Silence](https://parallax-view.org/tag/blast-of-silence/)
- [Classe Tous Risques](https://parallax-view.org/tag/classe-tous-risques/)
- [Come Drink With Me](https://parallax-view.org/tag/come-drink-with-me/)
- [Ernst Lubitsch](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ernst-lubitsch/)
- [I Was Born But](https://parallax-view.org/tag/i-was-born-but/)
- [J'Accuse](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jaccuse/)
- [La Roue](https://parallax-view.org/tag/la-roue/)
- [Le Deuxième Souffle](https://parallax-view.org/tag/le-deuxieme-souffle/)
- [Le Plaisir](https://parallax-view.org/tag/le-plaisir/)
- [Mafioso](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mafioso/)
- [Monte Carlo](https://parallax-view.org/tag/monte-carlo/)
- [Murnau Borzage and Fox](https://parallax-view.org/tag/murnau-borzage-and-fox/)
- [One Hour With You](https://parallax-view.org/tag/one-hour-with-you/)
- [Passing Fancy](https://parallax-view.org/tag/passing-fancy/)
- [The Love Parade](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-love-parade/)
- [The Smiling Lieutenant](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-smiling-lieutenant/)
- [Tokyo Chorus](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tokyo-chorus/)
- [Yasujiro Ozu](https://parallax-view.org/tag/yasujiro-ozu/)
- [Holocaust](https://parallax-view.org/tag/holocaust/)
- [Kate Winslet](https://parallax-view.org/tag/kate-winslet/)
- [Revolutionary Road](https://parallax-view.org/tag/revolutionary-road/)
- [Sam Mendes](https://parallax-view.org/tag/sam-mendes/)
- [Stephen Daldry](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stephen-daldry/)
- [The Reader](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-reader/)
- [A Matter of Life and Death](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-matter-of-life-and-death/)
- [Stairway to Heaven](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stairway-to-heaven/)
- [The Films of Michael Powell](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-films-of-michael-powell/)
- [Blackmail](https://parallax-view.org/tag/blackmail/)
- [Roberto Rosselini](https://parallax-view.org/tag/roberto-rosselini/)
- [The Taking Of Power By Louis XIV](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-taking-of-power-by-louis-xiv/)
- [Che](https://parallax-view.org/tag/che/)
- [Steven Soderbergh](https://parallax-view.org/tag/steven-soderbergh/)
- [All I Desire](https://parallax-view.org/tag/all-i-desire/)
- [All The Heaven Allows](https://parallax-view.org/tag/all-the-heaven-allows/)
- [Has Anybody Seen My Gal?](https://parallax-view.org/tag/has-anybody-seen-my-gal/)
- [Imitation of Life](https://parallax-view.org/tag/imitation-of-life/)
- [Magnificent Obsession](https://parallax-view.org/tag/magnificent-obsession/)
- [Tarnished Angels](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tarnished-angels/)
- [Written on the Wind](https://parallax-view.org/tag/written-on-the-wind/)
- [Ennio Morricone](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ennio-morricone/)
- [Darren Aronofsky](https://parallax-view.org/tag/darren-aronofsky/)
- [Marisa Tomei](https://parallax-view.org/tag/marisa-tomei/)
- [Mickey Rourke](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mickey-rourke/)
- [The Wrestler](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-wrestler/)
- [Australia](https://parallax-view.org/tag/australia/)
- [Changeling](https://parallax-view.org/tag/changeling/)
- [Cloverfield](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cloverfield/)
- [Diary of the Dead](https://parallax-view.org/tag/diary-of-the-dead/)
- [Gran Torino](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gran-torino/)
- [Let the Right One In](https://parallax-view.org/tag/let-the-right-one-in/)
- [Man on Wire](https://parallax-view.org/tag/man-on-wire/)
- [Redacted](https://parallax-view.org/tag/redacted/)
- [The Dark Knight](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-dark-knight/)
- [Best of 2008](https://parallax-view.org/tag/best-of-2008/)
- [Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired](https://parallax-view.org/tag/roman-polanski-wanted-and-desired/)
- [Albert Finney](https://parallax-view.org/tag/albert-finney/)
- [Gumshoe](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gumshoe/)
- [Movietone News 14](https://parallax-view.org/tag/movietone-news-14/)
- [Stephen Frears](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stephen-frears/)
- [Arch Oboler](https://parallax-view.org/tag/arch-oboler/)
- [Bewitched](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bewitched/)
- [Five](https://parallax-view.org/tag/five/)
- [Strange Holiday](https://parallax-view.org/tag/strange-holiday/)
- [The Arnelo Affair](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-arnelo-affair/)
- [The Twonky](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-twonky/)
- [1+1: Exploring the Kinsey Reports](https://parallax-view.org/tag/11-exploring-the-kinsey-reports/)
- [3D](https://parallax-view.org/tag/3d/)
- [Bwana Devil](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bwana-devil/)
- [Domo Arigato](https://parallax-view.org/tag/domo-arigato/)
- [Natural Vision](https://parallax-view.org/tag/natural-vision/)
- [Night of the Auk](https://parallax-view.org/tag/night-of-the-auk/)
- [The Bubble](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-bubble/)
- [Carol Reed](https://parallax-view.org/tag/carol-reed/)
- [Our Man in Havana](https://parallax-view.org/tag/our-man-in-havana/)
- [Alan Howarth](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alan-howarth/)
- [Angelo Badalamenti](https://parallax-view.org/tag/angelo-badalamenti/)
- [Cannibal Holocaust](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cannibal-holocaust/)
- [Carrie](https://parallax-view.org/tag/carrie/)
- [Crash](https://parallax-view.org/tag/crash/)
- [Dance of the Vampires](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dance-of-the-vampires/)
- [Dracula](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dracula/)
- [Dressed to Kill](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dressed-to-kill/)
- [Exorcist II: The Heretic](https://parallax-view.org/tag/exorcist-ii-the-heretic/)
- [Holocaust 2000](https://parallax-view.org/tag/holocaust-2000/)
- [Howard Shore](https://parallax-view.org/tag/howard-shore/)
- [John Barry](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-barry/)
- [John Morris](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-morris/)
- [John Neff](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-neff/)
- [Krzystof Komeda](https://parallax-view.org/tag/krzystof-komeda/)
- [Orson Welles’s Great Mysteries](https://parallax-view.org/tag/orson-wellesaes-great-mysteries/)
- [Pino Donaggio](https://parallax-view.org/tag/pino-donaggio/)
- [Prince of Darkness](https://parallax-view.org/tag/prince-of-darkness/)
- [Riz Ortolani](https://parallax-view.org/tag/riz-ortolani/)
- [The Chosen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-chosen/)
- [The Fearless Vampire Killers](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-fearless-vampire-killers/)
- [Wojciech Kilar](https://parallax-view.org/tag/wojciech-kilar/)
- [Chocolate](https://parallax-view.org/tag/chocolate/)
- [JeeJa Yanin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jeeja-yanin/)
- [Prachya Pinkaew](https://parallax-view.org/tag/prachya-pinkaew/)
- [Clive Barker](https://parallax-view.org/tag/clive-barker/)
- [Ryuhei Kitamura](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ryuhei-kitamura/)
- [The Midnight Meat Train](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-midnight-meat-train/)
- [Cesar](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cesar/)
- [Fanny](https://parallax-view.org/tag/fanny/)
- [Marcel Pagnol](https://parallax-view.org/tag/marcel-pagnol/)
- [Marius](https://parallax-view.org/tag/marius/)
- [Port of Seven Seas](https://parallax-view.org/tag/port-of-seven-seas/)
- [Brian Cox](https://parallax-view.org/tag/brian-cox/)
- [Lucky McKee](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lucky-mckee/)
- [Red](https://parallax-view.org/tag/red/)
- [David Lean](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-lean/)
- [Hobson's Choice](https://parallax-view.org/tag/hobsons-choice/)
- [Lynn Shelton](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lynn-shelton/)
- [My Effortless Brilliance](https://parallax-view.org/tag/my-effortless-brilliance/)
- [New Yorker Films](https://parallax-view.org/tag/new-yorker-films/)
- [A Man Escaped](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-man-escaped/)
- [A Moment of Innocence](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-moment-of-innocence/)
- [Beau Travail](https://parallax-view.org/tag/beau-travail/)
- [Cyclo](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cyclo/)
- [La Belle Noiseuse](https://parallax-view.org/tag/la-belle-noiseuse/)
- [L’Atalante](https://parallax-view.org/tag/laeatalante/)
- [Moolaade](https://parallax-view.org/tag/moolaade/)
- [Shoah](https://parallax-view.org/tag/shoah/)
- [The War Game](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-war-game/)
- [The Wind Will Carry Us](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-wind-will-carry-us/)
- [Underground](https://parallax-view.org/tag/underground/)
- [Weekend](https://parallax-view.org/tag/weekend/)
- [Matte Paintings](https://parallax-view.org/tag/matte-paintings/)
- [Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger](https://parallax-view.org/tag/michael-powell-emeric-pressburger/)
- [Production Histories](https://parallax-view.org/tag/production-histories/)
- [Visual Effects](https://parallax-view.org/tag/visual-effects/)
- [A Trip to Bountiful](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-trip-to-bountiful/)
- [Horton Foote](https://parallax-view.org/tag/horton-foote/)
- [Tender Mercies](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tender-mercies/)
- [The Old Man](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-old-man/)
- [To Kill A Mockingbird](https://parallax-view.org/tag/to-kill-a-mockingbird/)
- [Tomorrow](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tomorrow/)
- [Alan Moore](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alan-moore/)
- [Watchmen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/watchmen/)
- [Zach Snyder](https://parallax-view.org/tag/zach-snyder/)
- [Charles Laughton](https://parallax-view.org/tag/charles-laughton/)
- [James Agee](https://parallax-view.org/tag/james-agee/)
- [Night of the Hunter](https://parallax-view.org/tag/night-of-the-hunter/)
- [Robert Mitchum](https://parallax-view.org/tag/robert-mitchum/)
- [Shelley Winters](https://parallax-view.org/tag/shelley-winters/)
- [The Wild Bunch](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-wild-bunch/)
- [Braveheart](https://parallax-view.org/tag/braveheart/)
- [Mel Gibson](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mel-gibson/)
- [The Passion of the Christ](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-passion-of-the-christ/)
- [A Secret](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-secret/)
- [Ben X](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ben-x/)
- [Gulliver's Travels](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gullivers-travels/)
- [Pinocchio](https://parallax-view.org/tag/pinocchio/)
- [CinemaScope](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cinemascope/)
- [Henry Koster](https://parallax-view.org/tag/henry-koster/)
- [Jean Simmons](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jean-simmons/)
- [Richard Burton](https://parallax-view.org/tag/richard-burton/)
- [The Robe](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-robe/)
- [Japanese Girls at the Harbor](https://parallax-view.org/tag/japanese-girls-at-the-harbor/)
- [Mr. Thank You](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mr-thank-you/)
- [Ornamental Hairpin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ornamental-hairpin/)
- [The Masseurs and a Woman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-masseurs-and-a-woman/)
- [Travels with Hiroshi Shimizu](https://parallax-view.org/tag/travels-with-hiroshi-shimizu/)
- [F.W. Murnau](https://parallax-view.org/tag/f-w-murnau/)
- [Faust](https://parallax-view.org/tag/faust/)
- [Murnau: A Six DVD Box Set](https://parallax-view.org/tag/murnau-a-six-dvd-box-set/)
- [Nosferatu](https://parallax-view.org/tag/nosferatu/)
- [Tartuffe](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tartuffe/)
- [The Finances of the Grand Duke](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-finances-of-the-grand-duke/)
- [The Haunted Castle](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-haunted-castle/)
- [The Last Laugh](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-last-laugh/)
- [Forbidden Hollywood](https://parallax-view.org/tag/forbidden-hollywood/)
- [Frisco Jenny](https://parallax-view.org/tag/frisco-jenny/)
- [Heroes for Sale](https://parallax-view.org/tag/heroes-for-sale/)
- [Midnight Mary](https://parallax-view.org/tag/midnight-mary/)
- [Other Men's Women](https://parallax-view.org/tag/other-mens-women/)
- [The Purchase Price](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-purchase-price/)
- [Wild Boys of the Road](https://parallax-view.org/tag/wild-boys-of-the-road/)
- [William Wellman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/william-wellman/)
- [DVD on Demand](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dvd-on-demand/)
- [Warner Archive Collection](https://parallax-view.org/tag/warner-archive-collection/)
- [Carlos Reygadas](https://parallax-view.org/tag/carlos-reygadas/)
- [Silent Light](https://parallax-view.org/tag/silent-light/)
- [Adolphe Deutsch](https://parallax-view.org/tag/adolphe-deutsch/)
- [David Raksin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-raksin/)
- [Henry Mancini](https://parallax-view.org/tag/henry-mancini/)
- [Joe Hisaishi](https://parallax-view.org/tag/joe-hisaishi/)
- [John Ottman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-ottman/)
- [Max Steiner](https://parallax-view.org/tag/max-steiner/)
- [Miklos Rosza](https://parallax-view.org/tag/miklos-rosza/)
- [Vladimir Cosma](https://parallax-view.org/tag/vladimir-cosma/)
- [Federico Fellini](https://parallax-view.org/tag/federico-fellini/)
- [Fellini Satyricon](https://parallax-view.org/tag/fellini-satyricon/)
- [Cecil B. DeMille](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cecil-b-demille/)
- [Cleopatra](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cleopatra/)
- [Dave Fleischer](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dave-fleischer/)
- [Dorothy Arzner](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dorothy-arzner/)
- [Max Fleischer's Superman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/max-fleischers-superman/)
- [Merrily We Go to Hell](https://parallax-view.org/tag/merrily-we-go-to-hell/)
- [Mitchell Leisen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mitchell-leisen/)
- [Murder at the Vanities](https://parallax-view.org/tag/murder-at-the-vanities/)
- [Pre-Code Hollywood Collection](https://parallax-view.org/tag/pre-code-hollywood-collection/)
- [Search For Beauty](https://parallax-view.org/tag/search-for-beauty/)
- [Anthony Mann](https://parallax-view.org/tag/anthony-mann/)
- [Lost in Austen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lost-in-austen/)
- [Pride And Prejudice](https://parallax-view.org/tag/pride-and-prejudice/)
- [Reign of Terror](https://parallax-view.org/tag/reign-of-terror/)
- [The Yankee Clipper](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-yankee-clipper/)
- [JT Petty](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jt-petty/)
- [The Burrowers](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-burrowers/)
- [The Searchers](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-searchers/)
- [Caprica](https://parallax-view.org/tag/caprica/)
- [Henri-Georges Clouzot](https://parallax-view.org/tag/henri-georges-clouzot/)
- [Nickelodeon](https://parallax-view.org/tag/nickelodeon/)
- [Peter Bogdanovich](https://parallax-view.org/tag/peter-bogdanovich/)
- [The Wages of Fear](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-wages-of-fear/)
- [24 City](https://parallax-view.org/tag/24-city/)
- [Jia Zhiang-ke](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jia-zhiang-ke/)
- [Barbara Steele](https://parallax-view.org/tag/barbara-steele/)
- [Deadly Sweet](https://parallax-view.org/tag/deadly-sweet/)
- [JCVD](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jcvd/)
- [Jean-Claude Van Damme](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jean-claude-van-damme/)
- [Mabrouk El Mechri](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mabrouk-el-mechri/)
- [Michael Reeves](https://parallax-view.org/tag/michael-reeves/)
- [Star Trek](https://parallax-view.org/tag/star-trek/)
- [Star Trek: The Original Series Season One](https://parallax-view.org/tag/star-trek-the-original-series-season-one/)
- [The She-Beast](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-she-beast/)
- [Tinto Brass](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tinto-brass/)
- [In the Realm of the Senses](https://parallax-view.org/tag/in-the-realm-of-the-senses/)
- [Nagisa Oshima](https://parallax-view.org/tag/nagisa-oshima/)
- [Chop Shop](https://parallax-view.org/tag/chop-shop/)
- [Man Push Cart](https://parallax-view.org/tag/man-push-cart/)
- [Ramin Bahrani](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ramin-bahrani/)
- [Intimate Strangers](https://parallax-view.org/tag/intimate-strangers/)
- [Monsieur Hire](https://parallax-view.org/tag/monsieur-hire/)
- [Patrice Leconte](https://parallax-view.org/tag/patrice-leconte/)
- [Ridicule](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ridicule/)
- [The Hairdresser’s Husband](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-hairdresseraes-husband/)
- [The Perfume of Yvonne](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-perfume-of-yvonne/)
- [The Widow Of St. Pierre](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-widow-of-st-pierre/)
- [Enchanted April](https://parallax-view.org/tag/enchanted-april/)
- [Kelly Reichardt](https://parallax-view.org/tag/kelly-reichardt/)
- [Mike Newell](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mike-newell/)
- [The Curious Birth of Benjamin Button](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-curious-birth-of-benjamin-button/)
- [Wendy and Lucy](https://parallax-view.org/tag/wendy-and-lucy/)
- [J.J. Abrams](https://parallax-view.org/tag/j-j-abrams/)
- [Alexander Korda's Private Lives](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alexander-kordas-private-lives/)
- [Of Time and the City](https://parallax-view.org/tag/of-time-and-the-city/)
- [Rembrandt](https://parallax-view.org/tag/rembrandt/)
- [Robert Mark Kamen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/robert-mark-kamen/)
- [Taken](https://parallax-view.org/tag/taken/)
- [Terence Davies](https://parallax-view.org/tag/terence-davies/)
- [The Private Life of Henry VIII](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-private-life-of-henry-viii/)
- [Fat City](https://parallax-view.org/tag/fat-city/)
- [Reflections in a Golden Eye](https://parallax-view.org/tag/reflections-in-a-golden-eye/)
- [The Maltese Falcon](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-maltese-falcon/)
- [The Misfits](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-misfits/)
- [Crimes of the Future](https://parallax-view.org/tag/crimes-of-the-future/)
- [Detective Bureau 2-3](https://parallax-view.org/tag/detective-bureau-2-3/)
- [Fast Company](https://parallax-view.org/tag/fast-company/)
- [Jo Shishido](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jo-shishido/)
- [KazuhikoYamaguchi](https://parallax-view.org/tag/kazuhikoyamaguchi/)
- [Meiko Kaji](https://parallax-view.org/tag/meiko-kaji/)
- [Seijun Suzuki](https://parallax-view.org/tag/seijun-suzuki/)
- [Stereo](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stereo/)
- [Wandering Ginza Butterfly](https://parallax-view.org/tag/wandering-ginza-butterfly/)
- [James Stewart](https://parallax-view.org/tag/james-stewart/)
- [John Wayne](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-wayne/)
- [The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-man-who-shot-liberty-valance/)
- [Hirozaku Kore-Eda](https://parallax-view.org/tag/hirozaku-kore-eda/)
- [Kathryn Bigelow](https://parallax-view.org/tag/kathryn-bigelow/)
- [Olivier Assayas](https://parallax-view.org/tag/olivier-assayas/)
- [SIFF 2009](https://parallax-view.org/tag/siff-2009/)
- [Still Walking](https://parallax-view.org/tag/still-walking/)
- [Summer Hours](https://parallax-view.org/tag/summer-hours/)
- [The Hurt Locker](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-hurt-locker/)
- [David Russo](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-russo/)
- [The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-immaculate-conception-of-little-dizzle/)
- [David Cronenberg](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-cronenberg/)
- [Jonathan Frakes](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jonathan-frakes/)
- [Leonard Nimoy](https://parallax-view.org/tag/leonard-nimoy/)
- [M Butterfly](https://parallax-view.org/tag/m-butterfly/)
- [Mamoru Oshii](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mamoru-oshii/)
- [Patrick Stewart](https://parallax-view.org/tag/patrick-stewart/)
- [Star Trek: Original Motion Picture Collection](https://parallax-view.org/tag/star-trek-original-motion-picture-collection/)
- [The Captain's Summit](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-captains-summit/)
- [The Sky Crawlers](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-sky-crawlers/)
- [Whoopi Goldberg](https://parallax-view.org/tag/whoopi-goldberg/)
- [William Shatner](https://parallax-view.org/tag/william-shatner/)
- [Beyond Rangoon](https://parallax-view.org/tag/beyond-rangoon/)
- [John Boorman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-boorman/)
- [Christian Bale](https://parallax-view.org/tag/christian-bale/)
- [McG](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mcg/)
- [Sam Worthington](https://parallax-view.org/tag/sam-worthington/)
- [Terminator Salvation](https://parallax-view.org/tag/terminator-salvation/)
- [Boxcar Bertha](https://parallax-view.org/tag/boxcar-bertha/)
- [David Carradine](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-carradine/)
- [Kill Bill](https://parallax-view.org/tag/kill-bill/)
- [Kung Fu](https://parallax-view.org/tag/kung-fu/)
- [The Long Riders](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-long-riders/)
- [Bibi Andersson](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bibi-andersson/)
- [Gunnar Fischer](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gunnar-fischer/)
- [Ingmar Bergman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ingmar-bergman/)
- [Max Von Sydow](https://parallax-view.org/tag/max-von-sydow/)
- [Nils Poppe](https://parallax-view.org/tag/nils-poppe/)
- [The Seventh Seal](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-seventh-seal/)
- [Best of 2002](https://parallax-view.org/tag/best-of-2002/)
- [press release](https://parallax-view.org/tag/press-release/)
- [Seattle Film Critics Awards](https://parallax-view.org/tag/seattle-film-critics-awards/)
- [Best of 2003](https://parallax-view.org/tag/best-of-2003/)
- [Best of 2004](https://parallax-view.org/tag/best-of-2004/)
- [Jean Renoir](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jean-renoir/)
- [The Crime of M. Lange](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-crime-of-m-lange/)
- [The Little Theater of Jean Renoir](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-little-theater-of-jean-renoir/)
- [The Rules of the Game](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-rules-of-the-game/)
- [La Femme infidèle](https://parallax-view.org/tag/la-femme-infidele/)
- [La Fille coupée en deux](https://parallax-view.org/tag/la-fille-coupee-en-deux/)
- [Le Beau Serge](https://parallax-view.org/tag/le-beau-serge/)
- [Le Boucher](https://parallax-view.org/tag/le-boucher/)
- [Les Biches](https://parallax-view.org/tag/les-biches/)
- [Les Cousins](https://parallax-view.org/tag/les-cousins/)
- [Paris vu par…](https://parallax-view.org/tag/paris-vu-parae¦/)
- [Stéphane Audran](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stephane-audran/)
- [A Double Tour](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-double-tour/)
- [Comedy Of Power](https://parallax-view.org/tag/comedy-of-power/)
- [Cop Au Vin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cop-au-vin/)
- [Eye of Vichy](https://parallax-view.org/tag/eye-of-vichy/)
- [Flower of Evil](https://parallax-view.org/tag/flower-of-evil/)
- [Innocents with Dirty Hands](https://parallax-view.org/tag/innocents-with-dirty-hands/)
- [Inspecteur Lavardin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/inspecteur-lavardin/)
- [La Ceremonie](https://parallax-view.org/tag/la-ceremonie/)
- [La Route de Corinthe](https://parallax-view.org/tag/la-route-de-corinthe/)
- [La Rupture](https://parallax-view.org/tag/la-rupture/)
- [L’Enfer](https://parallax-view.org/tag/laeenfer/)
- [Le cri du hibou](https://parallax-view.org/tag/le-cri-du-hibou/)
- [Les Bonnes Femmes](https://parallax-view.org/tag/les-bonnes-femmes/)
- [Les Innocent aux Mains Sale](https://parallax-view.org/tag/les-innocent-aux-mains-sale/)
- [M. le Maudit](https://parallax-view.org/tag/m-le-maudit/)
- [Madame Bovary](https://parallax-view.org/tag/madame-bovary/)
- [Masques](https://parallax-view.org/tag/masques/)
- [Merci Pour le Chocolat](https://parallax-view.org/tag/merci-pour-le-chocolat/)
- [Nada](https://parallax-view.org/tag/nada/)
- [Poulet au vinaigre](https://parallax-view.org/tag/poulet-au-vinaigre/)
- [Que le bete meure](https://parallax-view.org/tag/que-le-bete-meure/)
- [Six in Paris](https://parallax-view.org/tag/six-in-paris/)
- [Story of Women](https://parallax-view.org/tag/story-of-women/)
- [Ten Days’ Wonder](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ten-daysae-wonder/)
- [The Bridesmaid](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-bridesmaid/)
- [The Cry of the Owl](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-cry-of-the-owl/)
- [The Pleasure Party](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-pleasure-party/)
- [The Swindle](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-swindle/)
- [This Man Must Die](https://parallax-view.org/tag/this-man-must-die/)
- [Une Partie de Plaisir](https://parallax-view.org/tag/une-partie-de-plaisir/)
- [Violette](https://parallax-view.org/tag/violette/)
- [Who's Got the Black Box?](https://parallax-view.org/tag/whos-got-the-black-box/)
- [Aguirre The Wrath of God](https://parallax-view.org/tag/aguirre-the-wrath-of-god/)
- [Klaus Kinski](https://parallax-view.org/tag/klaus-kinski/)
- [Werner Herzog](https://parallax-view.org/tag/werner-herzog/)
- [Alycia Delmore](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alycia-delmore/)
- [Humpday](https://parallax-view.org/tag/humpday/)
- [Joshua Leonard](https://parallax-view.org/tag/joshua-leonard/)
- [Mark Duplass](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mark-duplass/)
- [D.W. Griffith](https://parallax-view.org/tag/d-w-griffith/)
- [Donald Sosin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/donald-sosin/)
- [Douglas Fairbanks](https://parallax-view.org/tag/douglas-fairbanks/)
- [Lady of the Pavements](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lady-of-the-pavements/)
- [Lupe Velez](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lupe-velez/)
- [Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mont-alto-motion-picture-orchestra/)
- [San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2009](https://parallax-view.org/tag/san-francisco-silent-film-festival-2009/)
- [The Gaucho](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-gaucho/)
- [Bardelys the Magnificent](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bardelys-the-magnificent/)
- [Clive Brook](https://parallax-view.org/tag/clive-brook/)
- [Eleanor Boardman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/eleanor-boardman/)
- [Erotikon](https://parallax-view.org/tag/erotikon/)
- [Gregory La Cava](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gregory-la-cava/)
- [Gustav Machatý](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gustav-machata½/)
- [Jean Epstein](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jean-epstein/)
- [John Gilbert](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-gilbert/)
- [Josef von Sternberg](https://parallax-view.org/tag/josef-von-sternberg/)
- [King Vidor](https://parallax-view.org/tag/king-vidor/)
- [Philip Carli](https://parallax-view.org/tag/philip-carli/)
- [So's Your Old Man](https://parallax-view.org/tag/sos-your-old-man/)
- [Stephen Horne](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stephen-horne/)
- [The Fall of the House of Usher](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher/)
- [The Wind](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-wind/)
- [Victor Sjostrom](https://parallax-view.org/tag/victor-sjostrom/)
- [W. C. Fields](https://parallax-view.org/tag/w-c-fields/)
- [Wild Rose](https://parallax-view.org/tag/wild-rose/)
- [Alfred Hitchcock](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alfred-hitchcock/)
- [Topaz](https://parallax-view.org/tag/topaz/)
- [Army of Shadows](https://parallax-view.org/tag/army-of-shadows/)
- [Bob le Flambeur](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bob-le-flambeur/)
- [Jean-Pierre Melville](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jean-pierre-melville/)
- [L'Armée des ombres](https://parallax-view.org/tag/larmee-des-ombres/)
- [Le Cercle Rouge](https://parallax-view.org/tag/le-cercle-rouge/)
- [Le Samourai](https://parallax-view.org/tag/le-samourai/)
- [A Catalog of Anticipations](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-catalog-of-anticipations/)
- [David Lowery](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-lowery/)
- [David Patrick Lowery](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-patrick-lowery/)
- [Eastbound](https://parallax-view.org/tag/eastbound/)
- [Rawstock](https://parallax-view.org/tag/rawstock/)
- [Some Analog Lines](https://parallax-view.org/tag/some-analog-lines/)
- [St. Nick](https://parallax-view.org/tag/st-nick/)
- [Mark Hartley](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mark-hartley/)
- [Not Quite Hollywood](https://parallax-view.org/tag/not-quite-hollywood/)
- [Ozploitation](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ozploitation/)
- [Alan Pakula](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alan-pakula/)
- [All the President's Men](https://parallax-view.org/tag/all-the-presidents-men/)
- [Klute](https://parallax-view.org/tag/klute/)
- [Gordon Willis](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gordon-willis/)
- [Movietone News 34](https://parallax-view.org/tag/movietone-news-34/)
- [Warren Beatty](https://parallax-view.org/tag/warren-beatty/)
- [Alain Resnais](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alain-resnais/)
- [Elvis Presley](https://parallax-view.org/tag/elvis-presley/)
- [Last Year at Marienbad](https://parallax-view.org/tag/last-year-at-marienbad/)
- [Tickle Me](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tickle-me/)
- [Battle in Outer Space](https://parallax-view.org/tag/battle-in-outer-space/)
- [Husbands](https://parallax-view.org/tag/husbands/)
- [Ishiro Honda](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ishiro-honda/)
- [Jacques Tati](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jacques-tati/)
- [John Cassavetes](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-cassavetes/)
- [Mothra](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mothra/)
- [Playtime](https://parallax-view.org/tag/playtime/)
- [The H-Man](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-h-man/)
- [A Colt Is My Passport](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-colt-is-my-passport/)
- [Cruel Gun Story](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cruel-gun-story/)
- [I Am Waiting](https://parallax-view.org/tag/i-am-waiting/)
- [Nikkatsu Noir](https://parallax-view.org/tag/nikkatsu-noir/)
- [Rusty Knife](https://parallax-view.org/tag/rusty-knife/)
- [Take Aim at the Police Van](https://parallax-view.org/tag/take-aim-at-the-police-van/)
- [Fox and His Friends](https://parallax-view.org/tag/fox-and-his-friends/)
- [Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mother-kusters-goes-to-heaven/)
- [Rainer Werner Fassbinder](https://parallax-view.org/tag/rainer-werner-fassbinder/)
- [Fitzcarraldo](https://parallax-view.org/tag/fitzcarraldo/)
- [Dieter Dengler](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dieter-dengler/)
- [Rescue Dawn](https://parallax-view.org/tag/rescue-dawn/)
- [Steve Zahn](https://parallax-view.org/tag/steve-zahn/)
- [Even Dwarfs Started Small](https://parallax-view.org/tag/even-dwarfs-started-small/)
- [Bruno S](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bruno-s/)
- [Eva Mattes](https://parallax-view.org/tag/eva-mattes/)
- [Stroszek](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stroszek/)
- [Heart of Glass](https://parallax-view.org/tag/heart-of-glass/)
- [Fini Straubinger](https://parallax-view.org/tag/fini-straubinger/)
- [Land of Silence and Darkness](https://parallax-view.org/tag/land-of-silence-and-darkness/)
- [Signs of Life](https://parallax-view.org/tag/signs-of-life/)
- [Movietone News 36](https://parallax-view.org/tag/movietone-news-36/)
- [Del Negro](https://parallax-view.org/tag/del-negro/)
- [Helena Rojo](https://parallax-view.org/tag/helena-rojo/)
- [Movietone News 29](https://parallax-view.org/tag/movietone-news-29/)
- [Movietone News 62-63](https://parallax-view.org/tag/movietone-news-62-63/)
- [Ruy Guerra](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ruy-guerra/)
- [Little Dieter Needs to Fly](https://parallax-view.org/tag/little-dieter-needs-to-fly/)
- [The Ballad of the Little Soldier](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-ballad-of-the-little-soldier/)
- [The Dark Glow of the Mountains](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-dark-glow-of-the-mountains/)
- [Grizzly Man](https://parallax-view.org/tag/grizzly-man/)
- [Timothy Treadwell](https://parallax-view.org/tag/timothy-treadwell/)
- [Cool Hand Luke](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cool-hand-luke/)
- [Hard Times](https://parallax-view.org/tag/hard-times/)
- [Movietone News 66-67](https://parallax-view.org/tag/movietone-news-66-67/)
- [Slap Shot](https://parallax-view.org/tag/slap-shot/)
- [Sssssss](https://parallax-view.org/tag/sssssss/)
- [Strother Martin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/strother-martin/)
- [The Brotherhood of Satan](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-brotherhood-of-satan/)
- [Alligator](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alligator/)
- [Battle Beyond the Stars](https://parallax-view.org/tag/battle-beyond-the-stars/)
- [John Sayles](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-sayles/)
- [Perfect Match](https://parallax-view.org/tag/perfect-match/)
- [Piranha](https://parallax-view.org/tag/piranha/)
- [Return of the Secaucus 7](https://parallax-view.org/tag/return-of-the-secaucus-7/)
- [The Howling](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-howling/)
- [The Lady in Red](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-lady-in-red/)
- [Old Boyfriends](https://parallax-view.org/tag/old-boyfriends/)
- [Steve McQueen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/steve-mcqueen/)
- [Thomas McGuane](https://parallax-view.org/tag/thomas-mcguane/)
- [Tom Horn](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tom-horn/)
- [William Wiard](https://parallax-view.org/tag/william-wiard/)
- [Kurt Russell](https://parallax-view.org/tag/kurt-russell/)
- [Robert Zemeckis](https://parallax-view.org/tag/robert-zemeckis/)
- [Used Cars](https://parallax-view.org/tag/used-cars/)
- [L'Amour violé](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lamour-viole/)
- [Rape of Love](https://parallax-view.org/tag/rape-of-love/)
- [Yannick Bellon](https://parallax-view.org/tag/yannick-bellon/)
- [Brooke Shields](https://parallax-view.org/tag/brooke-shields/)
- [Randal Kleiser](https://parallax-view.org/tag/randal-kleiser/)
- [The Blue Lagoon](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-blue-lagoon/)
- [Alan Parker](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alan-parker/)
- [Fame](https://parallax-view.org/tag/fame/)
- [Andrew V. McLaglen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/andrew-v-mclaglen/)
- [Anthony Perkins](https://parallax-view.org/tag/anthony-perkins/)
- [ffOLKES](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ffolkes/)
- [Roger Moore](https://parallax-view.org/tag/roger-moore/)
- [Friday the 13th](https://parallax-view.org/tag/friday-the-13th/)
- [Paul Lynch](https://parallax-view.org/tag/paul-lynch/)
- [Prom Night](https://parallax-view.org/tag/prom-night/)
- [Sean S. Cunningham](https://parallax-view.org/tag/sean-s-cunningham/)
- [Blythe Danner](https://parallax-view.org/tag/blythe-danner/)
- [Lewis John Carlino](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lewis-john-carlino/)
- [The Great Santini](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-great-santini/)
- [Michael Caine](https://parallax-view.org/tag/michael-caine/)
- [Michael Ritchie](https://parallax-view.org/tag/michael-ritchie/)
- [Peter Benchley](https://parallax-view.org/tag/peter-benchley/)
- [The Island](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-island/)
- [Bill McKinney](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bill-mckinney/)
- [Bronco Billy](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bronco-billy/)
- [Clint Eastwood](https://parallax-view.org/tag/clint-eastwood/)
- [Sam Bottoms](https://parallax-view.org/tag/sam-bottoms/)
- [Scatman Crothers](https://parallax-view.org/tag/scatman-crothers/)
- [Sondra Locke](https://parallax-view.org/tag/sondra-locke/)
- [Carny](https://parallax-view.org/tag/carny/)
- [Gary Busey](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gary-busey/)
- [Jodie Foster](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jodie-foster/)
- [Robbie Robertson](https://parallax-view.org/tag/robbie-robertson/)
- [Robert Kaylor](https://parallax-view.org/tag/robert-kaylor/)
- [Coal Miner's Daughter](https://parallax-view.org/tag/coal-miners-daughter/)
- [Michael Apted](https://parallax-view.org/tag/michael-apted/)
- [Sissy Spacek](https://parallax-view.org/tag/sissy-spacek/)
- [Tommy Lee Jones](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tommy-lee-jones/)
- [Buzz Kulik](https://parallax-view.org/tag/buzz-kulik/)
- [The Hunter](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-hunter/)
- [Adam Baldwin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/adam-baldwin/)
- [Chris Makepeace](https://parallax-view.org/tag/chris-makepeace/)
- [Matt Dillon](https://parallax-view.org/tag/matt-dillon/)
- [My Bodyguard](https://parallax-view.org/tag/my-bodyguard/)
- [Tony Bill](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tony-bill/)
- [Donald Sutherland](https://parallax-view.org/tag/donald-sutherland/)
- [Mary Tyler Moore](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mary-tyler-moore/)
- [Ordinary People](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ordinary-people/)
- [Robert Redford](https://parallax-view.org/tag/robert-redford/)
- [Timothy Hutton](https://parallax-view.org/tag/timothy-hutton/)
- [Burt Reynolds](https://parallax-view.org/tag/burt-reynolds/)
- [David Niven](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-niven/)
- [Don Siegel](https://parallax-view.org/tag/don-siegel/)
- [Lesley-Anne Down](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lesley-anne-down/)
- [Rough Cut](https://parallax-view.org/tag/rough-cut/)
- [The Shining](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-shining/)
- [Best Boy](https://parallax-view.org/tag/best-boy/)
- [Ira Wohl](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ira-wohl/)
- [Adam Greenberg](https://parallax-view.org/tag/adam-greenberg/)
- [Bobby Di Ciccio](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bobby-di-ciccio/)
- [Gene Corman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gene-corman/)
- [Kelly Ward](https://parallax-view.org/tag/kelly-ward/)
- [Lee Marvin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lee-marvin/)
- [Mark Hamill](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mark-hamill/)
- [Robert Carradine](https://parallax-view.org/tag/robert-carradine/)
- [Siegfried Rauch](https://parallax-view.org/tag/siegfried-rauch/)
- [The Big Red One](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-big-red-one/)
- [Bruce Jenner](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bruce-jenner/)
- [Can't Stop the Music](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cant-stop-the-music/)
- [Nancy Walker](https://parallax-view.org/tag/nancy-walker/)
- [Paul Sand](https://parallax-view.org/tag/paul-sand/)
- [Steve Guttenberg](https://parallax-view.org/tag/steve-guttenberg/)
- [Tammy Grimes](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tammy-grimes/)
- [Valerie Perrine](https://parallax-view.org/tag/valerie-perrine/)
- [Village People](https://parallax-view.org/tag/village-people/)
- [George C. Scott](https://parallax-view.org/tag/george-c-scott/)
- [Peter Medak](https://parallax-view.org/tag/peter-medak/)
- [The Changeling](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-changeling/)
- [Trish Van Devere](https://parallax-view.org/tag/trish-van-devere/)
- [Caleb Deschanel](https://parallax-view.org/tag/caleb-deschanel/)
- [Carroll Ballard](https://parallax-view.org/tag/carroll-ballard/)
- [Mickey Rooney](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mickey-rooney/)
- [Teri Garr](https://parallax-view.org/tag/teri-garr/)
- [The Black Stallion](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-black-stallion/)
- [Honeysuckle Rose](https://parallax-view.org/tag/honeysuckle-rose/)
- [Jerry Schatzberg](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jerry-schatzberg/)
- [Willie Nelson](https://parallax-view.org/tag/willie-nelson/)
- [Claude Miller](https://parallax-view.org/tag/claude-miller/)
- [Dites-lui que je l’aime](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dites-lui-que-je-laeaime/)
- [Gérard Depardieu](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gerard-depardieu/)
- [Miou-Miou](https://parallax-view.org/tag/miou-miou/)
- [moviet](https://parallax-view.org/tag/moviet/)
- [Patricia Highsmith](https://parallax-view.org/tag/patricia-highsmith/)
- [This Sweet Sickness](https://parallax-view.org/tag/this-sweet-sickness/)
- [En Och En](https://parallax-view.org/tag/en-och-en/)
- [Erland Josephson](https://parallax-view.org/tag/erland-josephson/)
- [Ingrid Thulin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ingrid-thulin/)
- [One and One](https://parallax-view.org/tag/one-and-one/)
- [Sven Nykvist](https://parallax-view.org/tag/sven-nykvist/)
- [Making The Shining](https://parallax-view.org/tag/making-the-shining/)
- [Shelley Duvall](https://parallax-view.org/tag/shelley-duvall/)
- [McVicar](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mcvicar/)
- [Roger Daltrey](https://parallax-view.org/tag/roger-daltrey/)
- [Tom Clegg](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tom-clegg/)
- [Gregory Peck](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gregory-peck/)
- [Reginald Rose](https://parallax-view.org/tag/reginald-rose/)
- [The Sea Wolves](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-sea-wolves/)
- [Trevor Howard](https://parallax-view.org/tag/trevor-howard/)
- [Isabelle Adjani](https://parallax-view.org/tag/isabelle-adjani/)
- [Jacques Rouffio](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jacques-rouffio/)
- [Violette et François](https://parallax-view.org/tag/violette-et-francois/)
- [Burt Lancaster](https://parallax-view.org/tag/burt-lancaster/)
- [Cy Endfield](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cy-endfield/)
- [Douglas Hickox](https://parallax-view.org/tag/douglas-hickox/)
- [Peter O’Toole](https://parallax-view.org/tag/peter-oaetoole/)
- [Zulu Dawn](https://parallax-view.org/tag/zulu-dawn/)
- [Joe Dante](https://parallax-view.org/tag/joe-dante/)
- [James Mason](https://parallax-view.org/tag/james-mason/)
- [Joan Bennett](https://parallax-view.org/tag/joan-bennett/)
- [The Reckless Moment](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-reckless-moment/)
- [Bare Essence of Life](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bare-essence-of-life/)
- [Breathless](https://parallax-view.org/tag/breathless/)
- [Charlotte Lim Kay Kuen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/charlotte-lim-kay-kuen/)
- [Eighteen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/eighteen/)
- [Jang Kun-aje](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jang-kun-aje/)
- [Kamui](https://parallax-view.org/tag/kamui/)
- [My Daughter](https://parallax-view.org/tag/my-daughter/)
- [Sai Yoichi](https://parallax-view.org/tag/sai-yoichi/)
- [VIFF 2009](https://parallax-view.org/tag/viff-2009/)
- [Yang Ik-June](https://parallax-view.org/tag/yang-ik-june/)
- [Yokohama Satoko](https://parallax-view.org/tag/yokohama-satoko/)
- [Christopher Isherwood](https://parallax-view.org/tag/christopher-isherwood/)
- [Evelyn Waugh](https://parallax-view.org/tag/evelyn-waugh/)
- [Movietone News 64-65](https://parallax-view.org/tag/movietone-news-64-65/)
- [Terry Southern](https://parallax-view.org/tag/terry-southern/)
- [The Loved One](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-loved-one/)
- [Tony Richardson](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tony-richardson/)
- [Carol Channing](https://parallax-view.org/tag/carol-channing/)
- [Jackie Gleason](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jackie-gleason/)
- [John Phillip Law](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-phillip-law/)
- [Otto Preminger](https://parallax-view.org/tag/otto-preminger/)
- [Skidoo](https://parallax-view.org/tag/skidoo/)
- [Mark Rahner](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mark-rahner/)
- [Rotten](https://parallax-view.org/tag/rotten/)
- [Danny Lloyd](https://parallax-view.org/tag/danny-lloyd/)
- [Stephen King](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stephen-king/)
- [Charles Cyphers](https://parallax-view.org/tag/charles-cyphers/)
- [Dean Cundey](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dean-cundey/)
- [Debra Hill](https://parallax-view.org/tag/debra-hill/)
- [Donald Pleasence](https://parallax-view.org/tag/donald-pleasence/)
- [Halloween](https://parallax-view.org/tag/halloween/)
- [Jamie Lee Curtis](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jamie-lee-curtis/)
- [Movietone News 60-61](https://parallax-view.org/tag/movietone-news-60-61/)
- [Nancy Loomis](https://parallax-view.org/tag/nancy-loomis/)
- [Nick Castle](https://parallax-view.org/tag/nick-castle/)
- [P J Soles](https://parallax-view.org/tag/p-j-soles/)
- [13 Frightened Girls](https://parallax-view.org/tag/13-frightened-girls/)
- [Audition](https://parallax-view.org/tag/audition/)
- [Fermat's Room](https://parallax-view.org/tag/fermats-room/)
- [Frankenstein 1970](https://parallax-view.org/tag/frankenstein-1970/)
- [Homicidal](https://parallax-view.org/tag/homicidal/)
- [Left Bank](https://parallax-view.org/tag/left-bank/)
- [Mad Monster Party?](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mad-monster-party/)
- [Mr. Sardonicus](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mr-sardonicus/)
- [Night Of The Creeps](https://parallax-view.org/tag/night-of-the-creeps/)
- [Repulsion](https://parallax-view.org/tag/repulsion/)
- [The Hills Run Red](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-hills-run-red/)
- [The Tingler](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-tingler/)
- [The Walking Dead](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-walking-dead/)
- [Trick 'r Treat](https://parallax-view.org/tag/trick-r-treat/)
- [[REC]](https://parallax-view.org/tag/rec/)
- [Dave Parker](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dave-parker/)
- [The Dead Hate the Living](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-dead-hate-the-living/)
- [Bernardo Bertolucci](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bernardo-bertolucci/)
- [Jill Clayburgh](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jill-clayburgh/)
- [Luna](https://parallax-view.org/tag/luna/)
- [Broderick Crawford](https://parallax-view.org/tag/broderick-crawford/)
- [Celeste Holm](https://parallax-view.org/tag/celeste-holm/)
- [Dan Dailey](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dan-dailey/)
- [Howard Da Silva](https://parallax-view.org/tag/howard-da-silva/)
- [John Marley](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-marley/)
- [Jose Ferrer](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jose-ferrer/)
- [Larry Cohen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/larry-cohen/)
- [Michael Parks](https://parallax-view.org/tag/michael-parks/)
- [Raymond St. Jacques](https://parallax-view.org/tag/raymond-st-jacques/)
- [Rip Torn](https://parallax-view.org/tag/rip-torn/)
- [Ronee Blakley](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ronee-blakley/)
- [The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-private-files-of-j-edgar-hoover/)
- [John Schlesinger](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-schlesinger/)
- [Lisa Eichhorn](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lisa-eichhorn/)
- [Richard Gere](https://parallax-view.org/tag/richard-gere/)
- [Vanessa Redgrave](https://parallax-view.org/tag/vanessa-redgrave/)
- [William Devane](https://parallax-view.org/tag/william-devane/)
- [Yanks](https://parallax-view.org/tag/yanks/)
- [Karen Allen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/karen-allen/)
- [Ken Wahl](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ken-wahl/)
- [Philip Kaufman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/philip-kaufman/)
- [The Wanderers](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-wanderers/)
- [10](https://parallax-view.org/tag/10/)
- [Blake Edwards](https://parallax-view.org/tag/blake-edwards/)
- [Bo Derek](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bo-derek/)
- [Dudley Moore](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dudley-moore/)
- [Julie Andrews](https://parallax-view.org/tag/julie-andrews/)
- [Robert Webber](https://parallax-view.org/tag/robert-webber/)
- [Franc Roddam](https://parallax-view.org/tag/franc-roddam/)
- [Pete Townshend](https://parallax-view.org/tag/pete-townshend/)
- [Quadrophenia](https://parallax-view.org/tag/quadrophenia/)
- [The Who](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-who/)
- [American Gigolo](https://parallax-view.org/tag/american-gigolo/)
- [Allan Arkush](https://parallax-view.org/tag/allan-arkush/)
- [Christian Blackwood](https://parallax-view.org/tag/christian-blackwood/)
- [Hollywood's Wild Angel](https://parallax-view.org/tag/hollywoods-wild-angel/)
- [Jonathan Kaplan](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jonathan-kaplan/)
- [Martin Scorsese](https://parallax-view.org/tag/martin-scorsese/)
- [Paul Bartel](https://parallax-view.org/tag/paul-bartel/)
- [Peter Fonda](https://parallax-view.org/tag/peter-fonda/)
- [Roger Corman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/roger-corman/)
- [Ron Howard](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ron-howard/)
- [Alien](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alien/)
- [Dan O'Bannon](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dan-obannon/)
- [Harry Dean Stanton](https://parallax-view.org/tag/harry-dean-stanton/)
- [Ian Holm](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ian-holm/)
- [John Hurt](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-hurt/)
- [Ridley Scott](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ridley-scott/)
- [Sigourney Weaver](https://parallax-view.org/tag/sigourney-weaver/)
- [Tom Skerritt](https://parallax-view.org/tag/tom-skerritt/)
- [Veronica Cartwright](https://parallax-view.org/tag/veronica-cartwright/)
- [Yaphet Kotto](https://parallax-view.org/tag/yaphet-kotto/)
- [Brooke Adams](https://parallax-view.org/tag/brooke-adams/)
- [Chris Sarandon](https://parallax-view.org/tag/chris-sarandon/)
- [Cuba](https://parallax-view.org/tag/cuba/)
- [Denholm Elliott](https://parallax-view.org/tag/denholm-elliott/)
- [Hector Elizondo](https://parallax-view.org/tag/hector-elizondo/)
- [Jack Weston](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jack-weston/)
- [Richard Lester](https://parallax-view.org/tag/richard-lester/)
- [Sean Connery](https://parallax-view.org/tag/sean-connery/)
- [Alan Bates](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alan-bates/)
- [Barry Primus](https://parallax-view.org/tag/barry-primus/)
- [Bette Midler](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bette-midler/)
- [David Keith](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-keith/)
- [Frederic Forrest](https://parallax-view.org/tag/frederic-forrest/)
- [Mark Rydell](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mark-rydell/)
- [The Rose](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-rose/)
- [Vilmos Zsigmond](https://parallax-view.org/tag/vilmos-zsigmond/)
- [DeForest Kelley](https://parallax-view.org/tag/deforest-kelley/)
- [Gene Roddenberry](https://parallax-view.org/tag/gene-roddenberry/)
- [George Takei](https://parallax-view.org/tag/george-takei/)
- [Grace Lee Whitney](https://parallax-view.org/tag/grace-lee-whitney/)
- [James Doohan](https://parallax-view.org/tag/james-doohan/)
- [Majel Barrett](https://parallax-view.org/tag/majel-barrett/)
- [Nichelle Nichols](https://parallax-view.org/tag/nichelle-nichols/)
- [Persis Khambatta](https://parallax-view.org/tag/persis-khambatta/)
- [Robert Wise](https://parallax-view.org/tag/robert-wise/)
- [Star Trek: The Motion Picture](https://parallax-view.org/tag/star-trek-the-motion-picture/)
- [Stephen Collins](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stephen-collins/)
- [Walter Koenig](https://parallax-view.org/tag/walter-koenig/)
- [Franklyn Seales](https://parallax-view.org/tag/franklyn-seales/)
- [Harold Becker](https://parallax-view.org/tag/harold-becker/)
- [James Woods](https://parallax-view.org/tag/james-woods/)
- [John Savage](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-savage/)
- [Joseph Wambaugh](https://parallax-view.org/tag/joseph-wambaugh/)
- [Ronny Cox](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ronny-cox/)
- [Ted Danson](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ted-danson/)
- [The Onion Field](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-onion-field/)
- [Beau Bridges](https://parallax-view.org/tag/beau-bridges/)
- [Dick Van Dyke](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dick-van-dyke/)
- [Kathleen Quinlan](https://parallax-view.org/tag/kathleen-quinlan/)
- [Maureen Stapleton](https://parallax-view.org/tag/maureen-stapleton/)
- [Ray Bolger](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ray-bolger/)
- [Stanley Kramer](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stanley-kramer/)
- [The Runner Stumbles](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-runner-stumbles/)
- [Eric Idle](https://parallax-view.org/tag/eric-idle/)
- [Graham Chapman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/graham-chapman/)
- [John Cleese](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-cleese/)
- [Michael Palin](https://parallax-view.org/tag/michael-palin/)
- [Monty Python](https://parallax-view.org/tag/monty-python/)
- [Terry Gilliam](https://parallax-view.org/tag/terry-gilliam/)
- [Terry Jones](https://parallax-view.org/tag/terry-jones/)
- [The Life of Brian](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-life-of-brian/)
- [Barbara Babcock](https://parallax-view.org/tag/barbara-babcock/)
- [Christopher Lloyd](https://parallax-view.org/tag/christopher-lloyd/)
- [John Hancock](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-hancock/)
- [Paula Prentiss](https://parallax-view.org/tag/paula-prentiss/)
- [Robert Foxworth](https://parallax-view.org/tag/robert-foxworth/)
- [The Black Marble](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-black-marble/)
- [David Warner](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-warner/)
- [Malcolm McDowell](https://parallax-view.org/tag/malcolm-mcdowell/)
- [Mary Steenburgen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/mary-steenburgen/)
- [Nicholas Meyer](https://parallax-view.org/tag/nicholas-meyer/)
- [Time after Time](https://parallax-view.org/tag/time-after-time/)
- [Alex Karras](https://parallax-view.org/tag/alex-karras/)
- [Barbara Carrera](https://parallax-view.org/tag/barbara-carrera/)
- [Burgess Meredith](https://parallax-view.org/tag/burgess-meredith/)
- [Edward Albert](https://parallax-view.org/tag/edward-albert/)
- [Ernest Borgnine](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ernest-borgnine/)
- [Irwin Allen](https://parallax-view.org/tag/irwin-allen/)
- [Jacqueline Bisset](https://parallax-view.org/tag/jacqueline-bisset/)
- [James Franciscus](https://parallax-view.org/tag/james-franciscus/)
- [James Goldstone](https://parallax-view.org/tag/james-goldstone/)
- [John Considine](https://parallax-view.org/tag/john-considine/)
- [Paul Newman](https://parallax-view.org/tag/paul-newman/)
- [Red Buttons](https://parallax-view.org/tag/red-buttons/)
- [Stirling Silliphant](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stirling-silliphant/)
- [Valentina Cortese](https://parallax-view.org/tag/valentina-cortese/)
- [Veronica Hamel](https://parallax-view.org/tag/veronica-hamel/)
- [When Time Ran Out](https://parallax-view.org/tag/when-time-ran-out/)
- [William Holden](https://parallax-view.org/tag/william-holden/)
- [Elizabeth Ashley](https://parallax-view.org/tag/elizabeth-ashley/)
- [Joseph Cortese](https://parallax-view.org/tag/joseph-cortese/)
- [Talia Shire](https://parallax-view.org/tag/talia-shire/)
- [Windows](https://parallax-view.org/tag/windows/)
- [David W. Rolfe](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-w-rolfe/)
- [The Silent Witness](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-silent-witness/)
- [Fantasma](https://parallax-view.org/tag/fantasma/)
- [La Libertad](https://parallax-view.org/tag/la-libertad/)
- [Lisandro Alonso](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lisandro-alonso/)
- [Liverpool](https://parallax-view.org/tag/liverpool/)
- [Los Muertos](https://parallax-view.org/tag/los-muertos/)
- [Anne Marie](https://parallax-view.org/tag/anne-marie/)
- [Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens](https://parallax-view.org/tag/beneath-the-valley-of-the-ultravixens/)
- [Francesca "Kitten" Natividad](https://parallax-view.org/tag/francesca-kitten-natividad/)
- [Ken Kerr](https://parallax-view.org/tag/ken-kerr/)
- [Russ Meyer](https://parallax-view.org/tag/russ-meyer/)
- [Stuart Lancaster](https://parallax-view.org/tag/stuart-lancaster/)
- [Dominic Guard](https://parallax-view.org/tag/dominic-guard/)
- [Helen Morse](https://parallax-view.org/tag/helen-morse/)
- [Peter Weir](https://parallax-view.org/tag/peter-weir/)
- [Picnic at Hanging Rock](https://parallax-view.org/tag/picnic-at-hanging-rock/)
- [Rachel Roberts](https://parallax-view.org/tag/rachel-roberts/)
- [David Rowe](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-rowe/)
- [Newsfront](https://parallax-view.org/tag/newsfront/)
- [Phillip Noyce](https://parallax-view.org/tag/phillip-noyce/)
- [David Gulpilil](https://parallax-view.org/tag/david-gulpilil/)
- [Richard Chamberlain](https://parallax-view.org/tag/richard-chamberlain/)
- [The Cars That Ate Paris](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-cars-that-ate-paris/)
- [The Last Wave](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-last-wave/)
- [A Fistful of Dollars](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-fistful-of-dollars/)
- [A Fistful of Dynamite](https://parallax-view.org/tag/a-fistful-of-dynamite/)
- [Duck You Sucker](https://parallax-view.org/tag/duck-you-sucker/)
- [For A Few Dollars More](https://parallax-view.org/tag/for-a-few-dollars-more/)
- [Lee Van Cleef](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lee-van-cleef/)
- [Once Upon a Time in the West](https://parallax-view.org/tag/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west/)
- [Sergio Leone](https://parallax-view.org/tag/sergio-leone/)
- [The Good The Bad and The Ugly](https://parallax-view.org/tag/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/)
- [Bonnie Blue Flag](https://parallax-view.org/tag/bonnie-blue-flag/)
- [Lorena](https://parallax-view.org/tag/lorena/)
- [Moments out of Time](https://parallax-view.org/tag/moments-out-of-time/)
- [Movietone News 10](https://parallax-view.org/tag/movietone-news-10/)