7 years ago
All posts by Adam W. Hofbauer
Ethan Hawke’s Patient Journey
In Seymour: An Introduction, Ethan Hawke’s first attempt at making a documentary, pianist Seymour Bernstein proves to be an affably candid subject, sharing the story of his long life and genius-level talent. But a more subtextual question can’t help but hover ...
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The Rise of Will Power
He sits atop a rotating throne, rebuking gravity in a spray-painted netherverse, a spinning emperor with a golden scepter. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was indebted to the graffiti and Reebok aesthetic of hip-hop’s golden age, from which Will Smith had emerged ...
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Spice World: David Lynch’s “Dune” at 30
Last summer, a major studio allowed James Gunn, an untested indie darling, to helm a big-budget adaptation of an obscure science-fiction property. That the result, Guardians of the Galaxy, was a global hit, struck many as a surprisingly lucrative gamble. In hi...
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Come Fail with Us: “The Life Aquatic” at 10
I first saw The Life Aquatic in late 2004, when it premiered at the Winifred Moore Auditorium as part of the Webster University Film series. The exhibitors had supplied the university with boxes of souvenir caps baring the film’s title and a distinctive traffi...
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The Universal Dance of “La Nacion Clandestina”
In a recent video essay for All That Jazz, Matt Zoller Seitz refers to director Bob Fosse’s editing style as evoking a “continuously unfolding present tense moment.” Influenced by the French New Wave and Sam Peckinpah’s ballets of violence, Fosse Time, Seitz a...
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7 Movies With the Exact Same Villain
Sometime around 2003, movies hit critical mass for a particular kind of adversary. Beyond a few simple shared traits, and even a reasonable number of examples, a mold began to emerge of extreme specificity of onscreen villainy. Far from revealing some screen...
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Beyond Blaxploitation: A Few Words About James Earl Jones
In the latest installment of our series about black cinema in the '70s, we examine the career of one of our most esteemed black actors, which runs deeper than you may think.
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Beyond Blaxploitation: The Last Gasp of the Divided Self
In this installment of our series on black film in the '70s, we look at the work of two seminal black filmmakers of the period.
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Beyond Blaxpoitation: Other Voices, Other Faces
In August, 1965, the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Watts and Compton caught fire. After years of racial tension, segregated housing and police brutality, the largely African American community had rioted. Surviving footage shows flames, rubble, devastation. B...
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Black Faces, White Hoods: Blaxpoitation, Meta Narratives and the KKK
At first glance, the image is ironically funny. There’s a gun toting OJ Simpson, decked out in the robes of the Ku Klux Klan, taking aim at an anonymous redneck. Given OJ’s eventual fame, it’s impossible to separate the image from its context. It’s also the...
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