A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman
Any film that upsets theocrats and authoritarians from Tehran to Texas is alright by me. Originally a four-volume French publication, the recognized classic Persepolis is one of the most consistently challenged narratives of the 21st century, and was the #2 most-challenged book of 2014 in the U.S., according to the American Library Association.
Persepolis has been hard to categorize. It might be thought of as a kunstler-comic, the story of the…
The most purely fascist film I have seen since Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935).
Design for yourself the ultimate fascist fantasy: It would be set in a mythic, heroic past. It would encourage a cult of devotion to a Great Man who has no use for diplomacy and who sweeps scheming politicians aside in pursuit of his vision of a great “Reich” or empire. It would feature perfect physical specimens “impatient to die” (Eco) for the state, and…
The Animatrix, a nine-part collection that may fall under the rubric of “hyperlink cinema,” outdoes any and all of the main franchise sequels by leaps and bounds in terms of both style(s) and substance. Whereas the actual sequels merely repeated the look of the original, the “fourth part of the trilogy” doing a particularly lousy job even of that, here we have so much visual invention and philosophical heft, thanks partly to all the guest directors, that it’s even more…
This shock-schlock is a satire of America, obviously, but does it work, and if so, how well?
The film’s title tells us that Ralph Bakshi was looking to follow Bunuel’s lead in creating a movie designed start a riot, though the city that we see in the movie looks like an ordinary night in the Big Apple in those Jackie Curtis days.
The basic concept, Song of the South meets The Godfather, makes a deliberately jarring contrast between Disneyfied saccharine…
Why is this short, simple film one of my top favorites?
The Miles Brothers' film A Trip Down Market Street (1906) is a thirteen-minute "actuality" film, a popular mode at the time. The filmmakers simply placed a camera on the front of the Market Street cable car in San Francisco and shot footage of the journey along the street, concluding with the cable car’s arrival at the Embarcadero in front of the San Francisco Ferry Building. Apparently simple in execution,…
A sequel is a sort of replica, because, as Roland Barthes recalled in the preface to his Mythologies (1957), “things which are repeated are pleasing.” We go to repeat a pleasure, which is a paradoxical activity, and this new Blade Runner is at least as engaged with these vertiginous curiosities as was the original.
I’ve seen one reviewer here proclaim that the new film “is boring.” Well, you may be bored by it, but boringness doesn't inhere in the object;…
