On the use of music in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, which just turned 50.
A brief look at next month's Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, including a tribute to Russell Crowe.
A review of "Backdraft," the first film this critic ever reviewed professionally.
The latest and greatest on Blu-ray and DVD, including Tenet, The Irishman, Possessor, The Dark and the Wicked, and special edition releases of Total Recall, The Lord of the Rings, and Tremors.
A great movie star and versatile actor, the once and future Bond was also an icon of primordial masculinity, for better and worse.
Far Flung Correspondent Gerardo Valero reviews Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman."
An overview of twelve films in the 2019 Venice Film Festival that get my thumbs-up vote.
A brief consideration of "Taxi Driver," still Scorsese's masterpiece.
A piece about The Alloy Orchestra in light of their Ebertfest presentation of "The Son of the Sheik".
An appreciation of the actor's perseverance through age 63 despite depression.
An interview with Nicolas Winding Refn, director of "Valhalla Rising," "Drive" and "Only God Forgives," among other films. Simon Abrams talks to the filmmaker about midnight movies, meeting Alejandro Jodorowsky, and the possibility that he might day make a Wonder Woman movie.
Dedicated to memories of Roger Ebert, for the simple reason that talking about movies is so thrilling. He did not like lists, but I love his lists.
I'm fairly certain most Martin Scorsese fans prefer his Robert DeNiro period to the current one with Leonardo DiCaprio. The later entries may include the film that won him the Academy Award for Best Picture ("The Departed") and they've surely displayed signs of greatness, but I don't think any of them can be discussed as pinnacle achievements like his earlier ones.
The key strength of David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook" (2012) is that the acting is so strong that we forget we are watching the movie. In those moments that the plot guides us, it takes us in some directions familiar, some directions frightening, and some directions fun. In a year that has given us a compassionate story about addiction in "Flight," we also have this equally tender film about mental illness. I want to see this movie again, if at least because it is so happy, even though it did not have to be.
"Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel" is available March 27 on online outlets via iTunes, Vudu, CinemaNow and Amazon. Also on DVD and Blu-ray.
For B-movie buffs, exploitation film aficionados, and midnight movie cultists, the grand finale of "Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel," will be every bit as exhilarating as that montage of forbidden kisses at the end of "Cinema Paradiso." Taking its cue from the liberating, rebellious high point of the Roger Corman-produced "Rock and Roll High School," in which P. J. Soles and the Ramones rock the hallways of Vince Lombardi High, it offers up dizzying bursts of quintessential Corman: cheesy monsters, fiery car explosions, Vincent Price, blaxploitation kickass, marauding piranhas and Mary Woronov with a gun.
Alex Stapleton's "Corman's World" celebrates the singular cinematic legacy of the "King of the Bs," who has improbably and regretfully fallen into obscurity. Observes director Penelope Spheeris ("The Boys Next Door," "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years," "Wayne's World"): "If you ask a 20-25-year-old film buff, they won't know who he is."
This despite a career that spans almost 60 years and more than 400 films that Corman either directed or produced. But while his own name may be unfamiliar, many of the once-fledgling actors and filmmakers whom he nurtured/exploited are not: Martin Scorsese ("Boxcar Bertha"), Ron Howard ("Grand Theft Auto"), Peter Bogdanovich ("Targets"), Jonathan Demme ("Caged Heat"), Joe Dante ("Piranha"), Robert DeNiro ("Bloody Mama"), Pam Grier ("The Big Doll House"), screenwriter John Sayles ("The Lady in Red") -- all these and many more appear in "Corman's World" in new and archival interviews.
Robert DeNiro, receiving his honorary Cecil B. DeMille Golden Globe Sunday night and acknowledging all his movies ("Stanley and Iris," "Jacknife" and "Little Fockers") -- not just the ones that are included in his three-minute clip reel: "It's up to the audience to decide if it's entertainment, critics to decide if it's good and ultimately posterity to decide if it's art."
Great Movies
