Nathan Kosub
An American Werewolf in London, Night Gallery: “The Cemetery,” Pumpkinhead, Meet Me in St. Louis, Salem’s Lot, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “Hush,“ Black Sabbath: “A Drop of Water”
Why go back to the seventeenth century to tell a tale of love? Why lament the Forez plain when there is yet such natural beauty in the world as cinematographer Diane Baratier finds here?
The mid-century setting, the pop songs, the rain that falls as steam rises at a noodle stand in Huwei: we’ve seen this before, but it’s possible to talk about the segment’s failures without comparing them to Wong Kar-wai.
Van Sant’s first hit was Drugstore Cowboy. It is a movie about drug culture, about Portland and the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, and about the reliable marketability of pretty young actors playing outlaws.
A Few Great Pumpkins
Inferno, Cujo, The Devil Rides Out, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Paperhouse, Trouble Every Day, The Others, Halloween
Léaud, with his easy exasperations, reacts. He asserts his nervousness instead of hiding it; his hands indicate an ongoing, unguarded surprise with his own disruptive emotions. Truffaut increasingly scaled the performances back, but Godard, like Luc Moullet with A Girl Is a Gun, egged Léaud on.
“The name of this land is hell. It is not Mexico, of course, but in the heart.” Thus author Malcolm Lowry cleared the air in life for the inevitable posthumous adaptation of his 1947 novel Under the Volcano.
The first few minutes of Days of Being Wild (credits for executive producers, cold opening, title card) are my favorite few minutes in a movie made in my lifetime.
If every administration gets the movie it deserves, Evan Almighty is the most appropriate flop for the long decline of this worst of White Houses.
The video store cult section buried John Carpenter. His hour-and-a-half revelations were always modest, and he got the movie he wanted every time. No talk of director’s cuts, no commentary except about paid bills.