The first cut comes a few minutes into the second scene of Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker, and it happens so quickly that if you glance away for a second, you might not catch it. Sol Nazerman (Rod Steiger) is relaxing in the backyard of his sister’s place, and she offhandedly mentions, apropos...

Early on in Fletch Won, the eighth published novel in the series by Gregory McDonald and the first chronologically, Irwin Maurice Fletcher is reassigned to the society pages of the Los Angeles News-Tribune. “Frank, I don’t believe in society.” “That’s okay, Fletch. Society...

When the semi-annual conversation on female buddy movies resurfaces, there are usual suspects. Thelma and Louise. B.A.P.S. Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion. Steel Magnolias. One film that doesn’t show up in the conversation nearly as much as it should  is the French masterpiece Céline...

The 1990s were a strange time for filmmakers attempting to understand the Internet. As the technology went mainstream, with more families securing their own connections to the World Wide Web at home and schools adapting their curriculum to include more computer instruction, cinema responded. There...

In 1998, Stanley Kubrick accepted the D.W. Griffith Award from the Director’s Guild of America. In his acceptance speech, he compared Griffith to the Grecian myth of Icarus. Like Icarus, Griffith flew too close to the sun, but instead of his wax-and-feather wings melting, Griffith was shunned by...

When Grand Central Publishing released a new edition of the novel First Blood in 2000, author David Morrell penned an introduction, attempting to bridge the gap between the character he wrote in the early 1970s and the version of that character that had been lodged into pop consciousness by (at...

John Frankenheimer’s 1966 thriller Seconds is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel as part of their Saul Bass centennial,and his distinctive opening title sequences, and good golly Miss Molly, Saul is putting in work from frame one here. The images are smeary and distorted, disturbingly...

The Harlem-set blaxploitation movies of the 1970s – films like Super Fly, Black Caesar, and Hell Up in Harlem – share a specific verbal language, and few of its cornerstones were as recognizable as the high, wide aerial shots that typically opened them. This imagery served a specific purpose,...

The Shakespeare adaptations of the 1990s and early 2000s are unified by an excess of style, and by a series of big risks. The nightmarish bleakness of Julie Taymor’s Titus, the MTV surrealism of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, the earnest romanticism of Gil Junger’s 10 Things I Hate About...

Several years ago, while parsing out my love for the films of the late, lamented Tony Scott, I came to a realization: I am a Crimson Tide guy, living in a Top Gun world. While the earlier film, a gorgeously shot and technically stunning action-drama about hotshot Navy fighter pilots, remains a...

Proto-indie filmmaker Roger Corman once said, “Motion pictures are the art form of the 20th century, and one of the reasons is the fact that films are a slightly corrupted artform. They fit this century – they combine art and business!” Not the most romantic sentiment from the Pit and the...

Early in Claire’s Knee, Eric Rohmer’s 1970 comedy/drama, our protagonist Jérôme engages in an idle, maybe-hypothetical-maybe-not with his old friend Aurora, a novelist. Struck for ideas, she wonders what would happen if she based her new work on Jérôme – noting, as she does, the little...

Imagine an early 20th century drawing room, or alternatively, a fog-laden crypt. Suddenly from the shadows he emerges—a man with pale skin, dashingly tall and clad in a flowing cape, his booming, sonorous voice, piercing eyes and sly half-smile making his identity unmistakable: Dracula. This...

In the Shadow of the Guillotine. The Murderous Corpse. The False Magistrate. The titles are as macabre as the masked madman that appears in them. From the publication of his first adventure in February 1911, the character of Fantômas seemed tailor-made for the movies. A master of disguise and...

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou Small-time thug Nicky (John Cassavetes) is in a real pickle. He stole a grand and ran, and his boss is a powerful and unsavory man who...