7 years ago
Featured (10 posts found)
Spotlight on Fandor: “The Marquise of O”
Eric Rohmer’s penchant for neorealist romantic comedies did not preclude the occasional aesthetic experiment. His Perceval le Gallois (1978), for example, remains one of the most startlingly experimental features of the 1970s, pushing realism into the realm of...
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“Run All Night”
“I’m coming after you with everything I’ve got,” growls Irish godfather Ed Harris at his old buddy Liam Neeson, the two adversaries facing off over midnight coffee at a New York diner. “As long as you’re coming after Michael,” Neeson later retorts, “I’m coming...
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“Cinderella”
It wasn’t even a year ago when Disney’s infamous Sleeping Beauty villain received a feminist makeover and became a relatable, sympathetic heroine in Robert Stromberg’s Maleficent. The worldwide phenomenon called Frozen only recently redefined true love as a si...
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Of Tramps and Men: Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator” at 75
Naturally, the first joke in Charlie Chaplin’s first true sound film is silent. The Great Dictator (1940), the filmmaker’s (in)famous takedown of Adolf Hitler at the height of America’s non-interventionist stance on World War II, opens with a disclaimer that m...
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Spotlight on Fandor: “Green”
Men dominate the first scene of Green, in which journalist Sebastian (Lawrence Michael Levine) and his friend (Alex Ross Perry) pompously extol the virtues of Philip Roth, engaging in a game of one-upmanship to see who can concoct the most effusive praise. Yet...
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Bring It On Back: The Best of the ’90s
If Twitter is good for one thing, it’s for satiating our inexplicable desire to make lists. So many a critic and film buff to the micro blogging platform to list the best and/or their favorite films of the 1990s with the hashtag #90sTen. I’m not entire sure wh...
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Spotlight on Fandor: Derek Jarman’s “Wittgenstein”
Wittgenstein introduces the Austrian-British philosopher as a boy (Clancy Chassay) sitting at a table, jotting down a note. “If people did not sometimes do silly things,” the lad says haltingly as he scribbles along, “nothing intelligent would ever get done.” ...
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“Wild Canaries”
The opening two scenes of Lawrence Michael Levine’s Wild Canaries set the absurdist tone for the wry suspense and hilarity to come. In the first, a glove-clad man mysteriously enters the apartment of an old lady and eerily caresses her face; the setting porten...
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“Hot Tub Time Machine 2”
Hot Tub Time Machine 2 commits the two biggest sins of the dudebro comedy genre legitimized by the success of The Hangover series. The first is that this sequel exists at all. This film’s necessity comes courtesy of the uncanny way studios package their greed ...
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The Theory of the Tortured Genius
There was a time when geniuses were professionals who were not only good at their jobs, but pleasant to others as well. The entrenched stereotype of geniuses once labeled them as shy outsiders or tongue-tied geeks, not arrogant narcissists. Somewhere down the ...
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