Below you'll find a list of all posts from January, 2017
(Welcome to Movies for the Resistance, a weekly column intended to showcase films with particular pertinence for 2017. One of the fundamental purposes of art in general, and movies in particular, is to serve as a spiritual armory: bringing hope, timely lessons and shared experiences when times are dark. They can move us to positive political action, lend insight to …
At the top of today’s list Danny Kaye’s The Court Jester, released in 1956. It stands as a high point of Kaye’s career, both for the marvelous way he sends up Errol Flynn-style swashbuckling (complete with Basil Rathbone as the villain) and for the marvelous wordplay of the script (“the pellet with the poison’s in the flagon with the dragon; the vessel with the …
In The Hero with A Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell posited two poles of human perception. At one end sits waking, conscious life, which is mainly taken up by the necessities of existence: jobs, bills, children, family, chores. At the other sits deep sleep – sleep without dreams – in which we commune with whatever cosmic forces lie beyond this level …
(Welcome to Movies for the Resistance, a weekly column intended to showcase films with particular pertinence for 2017. One of the fundamental purposes of art in general, and movies in particular, is to serve as a spiritual armory: bringing hope, timely lessons and shared experiences when times are dark. They can move us to positive political action, lend insight to …
Show of hands: who wants to watch a bracing 104 minutes of Soviet-era propaganda? I knew you would! Sergei Eisenstein’s October opened today in 1928: generally regarded as one of the masterpieces of Soviet cinema and granting its director license to expound upon numerous cinematic theories — like montage — that today have become standard practi- You in the back, quit falling …
If you need some John Wayne in your life, today had it, with the release of Mark Rydell’s The Cowboys in 1972. As late-era Wayne goes, it’s hard to top… and Bruce Dern is still living down what his character did to the Duke in this movie. On a completely different note, visual effects maestro Stan Winston made a rare stint as …
The big opener today took place in 1948, with the release of John Huston’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Besides adding another classic to Humphrey Bogart’s resume, it earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Huston’s father Walter. (Huston also directed his daughter Anjelica to an Oscar, the only director to have pulled off such a feat.) Other notable releases today …
Once again, we turn to the wide openings to see us through this incredibly stinky period in the cinematic calendar. John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer opened wide today in 1990… four years after its film festival premier. As you may have guessed from the title, it’s a light-heartened romp about a little girl who adopts a kitten. …
New releases in January usually consist of bad horror films and similar stinkers that the studios would prefer nobody notice amid the buzz of Oscar season. There was one, however, that — while hardly a classic — did much better for itself than anyone suspected. Imposter, based on a Philip K. Dick story and featuring an A-list cast that included …