In BABYLON, Damien Chazelle has given us several films about the last hurrah of silent films and the birth of synchronized sound. Some of them are good, some of them are muddled, and one of them is superb. Chazelle’s ambitious attempt to encapsulate a time and place provokes respect for the effort, even when it… Read More »
ONCE UPON A TIME . . . IN HOLLYWOOD
The 9th film from Quentin Tarantino, aka ONCE UPON A TIME . . . IN HOLLYWOOD, takes us back to 1969, and a land of fragile dreams, transactional relationships, and the manifestation of the dark side of it all in the form of Charles Manson (Damon Herriman). Manson himself has but a cameo in the… Read More »
WOMEN HE’S UNDRESSED — Gillian Armstrong Interview
Gillian Armstrong knew little if anything about George Orry-Kelly when she started making her zesty and intimate documentary about him, WOMEN HE’S UNDRESSED. The Australian with enormous talent and even more guts, hopped a boat to New York City when he was 24, where he met and fell in love with Archie Leach, and became… Read More »
CAFÉ SOCIETY
There is a theological bent to Woody Allen’s CAFÉ SOCIETY. It’s there in the constant bickering between the hero’s parents about whether or not a relative has a Jewish-shaped head. And, furthermore, if he doesn’t, how can he be a proper Jew? Such questions are a Midrash on the actual story, which concerns a young… Read More »
HAIL, CAESAR!
If Douglas Sirk had directed a film noir written by Billy Wilder, it might have looked something like HAIL, CAESAR!, the latest thoughtful tangle of philosophy and whimsy from the Coen Brothers. Taking place in a 1951 Hollywood not entirely unlike the one that actually existed, it mixes Cold War paranoia, carefully managed studio PR… Read More »
Gurinder Chadha’s Imaginative BRIDE AND PREJUDICE
Gurinder Chadha, like her films, has a lot to say on a great many topics. Also like her films, she’s entertaining while she’s saying it. When I spoke to her on January 27, 2005, she waxed loquacious on Bollywood meeting Hollywood on and off the screen, her responsibility as a filmmaker to her audience, and why… Read More »