I’m torn. The historical importance of Czlowiek z marmuru; its strategy of deconstruction; its captivating style; coming from Communist Poland, the sheer amazement its anti-Communism generates—that the film even got made; its examination of government/media manipulation of individuals and the public: all these factors argue on behalf of Wajda’s film. On the other hand, it […]
Daily Archives: November 7, 2007
Sin is a trick on niggers. . . . Jesus is a trick on niggers. . . . There is no peace to the redeemed. — Hazel Motes, in Wise Blood The legacy of Christianity in the South is this: It was a method for drawing obedience from African slaves. It promoted the obscenity that […]
The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest English-Language Films list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis Northern Lights, co-directed by John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, attempts to blur the line between its historical fiction and documentary. Blending actors and nonprofessionals, […]
The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest English-Language Films list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis I saw a leg sticking out. . . . I need something like this for my documentary! It’s America: all those cars smashing together. […]
The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest English-Language Films list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis During the seventies, Robert Altman made a series of “revisionist” films testing the assumptions of familiar genres. Perhaps the most brilliant of these is […]
A bleak black comedy, Salesman follows door-to-door four Bible salesmen in their holy quest for an unholy buck. (Such laborers, capitalism’s dogged foot-soldiers, have been replaced by telemarketers and by pitch-people on televised infomercials.) An example of cinéma-vérité, Salesman was shot in black and white by Albert and David Maysles and brilliantly edited by Charlotte […]
The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest English-Language Films list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis The same year as the glib, vacuous Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch portrayed the twilight of the Hole-in-the-Wall […]
