Misogynist! Genius!

The title is a line from Le Tigre's "What's Yr Take on Cassavettes?" but applies equally well to Dario Argento, and all accusations and adorations are true. On a freezing Saturday I start to write but end up reading endless reviews of giallo dvds I'll probably never see, on sweet sites like the Mondo Digital, the Cinebeats, the Final Girl, the Tenebrous Empire, the Bleeding Skull and my long-time favorite, Eccentric Cinema. I love reading about movies...

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Cinema's Naughtiest Germans, Part Two

  BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY (2002)The best aspect of this strange tale of German gymnasium girls--torn apart by conflicting development rates-- are the two actresses, one of whom, Karoline Herfurth, looks a bit like Liv Ullman. She plays Steffi, the poutier of the pair, while the radiant and very German looking Anna Maria Muhe plays Kati, her more "normal" friend. Whenever the film is focused on either of their faces, it’s fascinating as they are...

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Cinema's Naughtiest Germans!

Oh those Germans. And how well they die... on Netflix! It seems half the films available for instant viewing are for, by, or about that most egomaniacally insane of western nations, Deutschland! For some reason these Teutonic descendants of pillaging marauders and towheaded savages are just meant for the casual distance provided by Netflix streaming. Let's take a look:1. The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979, dir. Fassbinder)Failed attempts to get through...

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Great Dads of the 1970s: Lee Marvin in THE BIG RED ONE (1980)

Sometimes a "period piece" tells more about the period in which it was created than the one it depicts. Fuller's grand war saga THE BIG RED ONE is such a film, with Fuller's unique mix of sentiment and vulgarity being the ideal commentary on the 1970s mindset, at least how I remember it. You could almost say that Fuller's aesthetic came to mesh so perfectly with the 1970s that at the time--and especially edited to nearly half it's intended length--THE...

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le rayon bleu de Deneuve

Xmas is over and I'm now in the blu-ray group. It's cool and all but man, all that detail and clarity scares me motionless. Two minutes into it and I'm really missing the blur that used to cover all the tiny beads of sweat under actors' stage makeup. Well luckily there's Criterion, who manage to make blu-ray look just better enough to be worthwhile, but not so sharp as to cut the nose of a snoopy detective, or possible peeping tom? Shall we all not...

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Wicker Lieutenant: Port of Call: Summerisle

I am not embarrassed to say it: Neil LaBute's WICKER MAN (2006)  remake finally moved me, we reach. After four years of starting and stopping all through the early scenes with Cage as an overwrought motorcycle cop retrieving a stuffed animal thrown out a speeding car, after four years of vowing to return one day, finally. Look at me, mom! I'm all right!So now please don't sacrifice me.It helped me to have seen ANTICHRIST and BAD LIEUTENANT 2:...

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The Many Agelessnesses of AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY (1997)

A lot of shit went down in 1997, the year AUSTIN POWERS came out: loungecore was the big vibe in downtown New York and my loungey clique was so 'hip' we made the cover of the New York Times style section; Faxy Brown was Thursdays, mainly at Lansky's; Weds was lounge night at Windows on the World (top floor of the World Trade Center); Friday was for tourists, man, so we stayed in and did ecstasy and watched Bond; feather boas, Pizzicato 5, cosmopolitans,...

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