‘Goodfellas’: Martin Scorsese’s Anthropological Goodlife Through a Lens
As far back as I can remember, director Martin Scorsese has been synonymous with wiseguys, mooks, goombahs, and spin-on-a-dime funny-how guys delivering a gut punch…
Interview
Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘Hard Eight’, AKA ‘Sydney’: “It’s Always Good to Meet a New Friend”
Paul Thomas Anderson’s debut film Hard Eight (working title Sydney, preferred by Anderson, thwarted by his backers) arose from the performance of a veteran actor…
God’s Lonely Funny Man: Martin Scorsese’s ‘The King of Comedy’ and America’s Pathological Obsession with Fame
In this age of television wannabes and quick fix celebs, it is fitting to look back at The King of Comedy, Martin Scorsese’s dark comedy…
Empire’s End: John Huston’s ‘The Man Who Would Be King’
On the occasion of John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King screening at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2010 to mark star Sean…
‘Mise-en-Scène’ and Fritz Lang: The Invaluable, Short-Lived Magazine’s Article on the Master of Darkness
In 1979, Case Western Reserve University Film Society started publishing a magazine called Mise-en-Scéne, a 70-plus-page cinephilic treasure chest with a series of high-quality articles…
‘Magnolia’: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Absorbing Mosaic of Compassion, Humanity and the Importance of Forgiveness
In 1997, an ambitious 26-year-old called Paul Thomas Anderson made Boogie Nights, his sophomore directing effort that dazzled the film loving community. The commercial and…
Philip Kaufman’s ‘The Right Stuff’: “A Search Film, a Quest for a Certain Quality that May Have Seen Its Best Days”
The vexed question of patriotism hangs over Damien Chazelle’s First Man, a somber epic that manages to be both a very visceral examination of the…
The Story of ‘Saboteur’, Hitchcock’s First Truly American Film
When Alfred Hitchcock came to the United States at the end of the 1930s, having been making films in England for twenty years, it took…
Psycho Pension Qu’est-ce que c’est: Richard Donner’s ‘Lethal Weapon’ Is a Real Live Wire
You think I’m crazy? You call me crazy, you think I’m crazy? You wanna see crazy? Well, what do you wanna hear, man? Do…
‘L’Avventura’: Michelangelo Antonioni’s Visual Poetry and Its Impact on the World of Film
It was May 1960 when Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura first introduced itself to the public’s eye. Today, this classic of European art films is hailed as…