Within Our Gates, Oscar Micheaux's best-known film by a country mile and the only other I've seen, has a reputation for being hard to follow and convoluted. Next to Symbol of the Unconquered, it's a paragon of narrative clarity and efficiency. That's a damn shame, because like that film, Unconquered depicts the Jim Crow South with nuance and texture you wouldn't necessarily expect - or need, even - from a cri de coeur counterpoint to Birth of a Nation. Great…
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
-
Leprechaun 1993
As far as splatter franchises go, the Leprechaun films lie somewhere below Halloweens 4-6 but above, I dunno, Wishmaster in the gorehound canon, or so it seems to me, anyway. The only real reason I've prioritized Leprechaun above those others - which remain unseen by me - is out of longtime idle curiosity stoked by a proudly irony-poisoned college acquaintance who holds the series in rather high esteem. Maybe inevitably, the first entry doesn't quite match its inflated cult legacy:…
Translated from by
Popular reviews
More-
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood 2019
It's with a heavy heart that I find myself agreeing with Richard Brody: Tarantino's latest joint really is, in the final analysis, a fantasy of white male triumph over the upheavals of the 60s. That's ironic, of course, because white men did ultimately win that war, saving Hollywood from itself with tales of idiopathic male anxiety and nostalgic pastiche that would become the studio blueprint for decades hence. In a way, then, Once Upon a Time is more a rebuff…
Translated from by -
Sorcerer 1977
I'd say this is the greatest movie ever made about driving two payloads of extremely volatile nitroglycerin across many miles of jungle terrain, except that I haven't yet seen the The Wages of Fear, the Clouzot original. Anyway, a masterpiece. In a moment of perverse inspiration I assigned this most zoomer-unfriendly of films for New Hollywood week. Honestly have no idea what to expect their response to be!
Translated from by
