Prospero’s Poems am an admirer of Ruiz; I’ve selected two of his films for my list of films I believe you should see before you die. It is a very personal list, consisting more or less of the films that have helped build my life....
The short-tempered Daffy Duck must improvise madly as the backgrounds, his costumes, the soundtrack, even his physical form, shifts and changes at the whim of the animator.
A Short History of Film Folds have a small list of films I think are essential viewing. This is on it, only one of two allowed for that year. Looking at my list, there are a few animated shorts, and I think that makes sense. Animators...
A film projectionist longs to be a detective, and puts his meagre skills to work when he is framed by a rival for stealing his girlfriend's father's pocketwatch.
Creating the Art of Folding am an enthusiast of what I call "folding" in film. That's the collection of techniques that map some awareness or identification of what the film is, to the story within the film. It isn't just a simple game, but a...
Fifth Avenue socialite Irene Bullock needs a "forgotten man" to win a scavenger hunt, and no one is more forgotten than Godfrey Park, who resides in a dump by the East River. Irene hires Godfrey as a servant for her riotously unhinged family, to the chagrin of her spoiled sister, Cornelia, who tries her best to get Godfrey fired. As Irene falls for her new butler, Godfrey turns the tables and teaches the frivolous Bullocks a lesson or two.
The Man 30s was when movies decided what they want to be. You can spin one of three or four narratives tracing that development. One of those narratives casts genres as beings and has them duking it out, only a few surviving. In this narrative, you'd...
A fading southern belle moves in with her sister in New Orleans where her ferocious brother-in-law takes stabs at her sanity.
Mass Transit vast majority of films use someone else's vocabulary, so when you can run across one that helped create that vocabulary it is cause for celebration. Usually the originality is in the vision of the filmmaker, but here it is in the manner of...
A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.
Elephant Men older gems have to be watched with eyes on two levels. The first concerns the experience within the narrative. Projects that worked well in this regard when new often fade. Those that continue to work as the context changes get called "classics" as if...
The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other.
No Dissonance film deserves to be on anyone's list of top films. My problem is that it is so perfect, so seamlessly polished, it is hard to appreciate the individual excellences. The acting is top notch. I believe that monologue acting is quite a bit simpler...
Thymian Henning, an innocent young girl, is raped by the clerk of her father's pharmacy. She becomes pregnant, is rejected by her family, and must fend for herself in a harsh, cruel world.
The Diary are two things about this that make it essential viewing. The first is obvious. Louise Brooks fills the camera like no one else in my experience. And like no one else probably could now that movies have filled out all the sensory space...
Capricious small-town girl Juliette and barge captain Jean marry after a whirlwind courtship, and she comes to live aboard his boat, L'Atalante. As they make their way down the Seine, Jean grows weary of Juliette's flirtations with his all-male crew, and Juliette longs to escape the monotony of the boat and experience the excitement of a big city. When she steals away to Paris by herself, her husband begins to think their marriage was a mistake.
Adam in His Prime a legacy! There's a very fine recent film named "Young Adam." Its extremely well done and it matters. Few people saw it I think. Its very much like this, indeed has some of the very shots. Its set on a barge and...
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break is a 1941 film about a man who wants to sell a film story to Esoteric Studios. On the way he gets insulted by little boys, beaten up for ogling a woman, and abused by a waitress. W. C. Fields' last starring role in a feature-length film.
Jumping Suckers We is possibly the last gasp of vaudevillian humour in movies, and to my mind the best beyond the early Marx brothers movies which were just filmed acts. But this is something quite different, firmly a film, a folded film, the kind I...
