Jonathan Rosenbaum's Blog: jonathanrosenbaum.com, page 10

Potent Pessimism [on Cy Endfield]

From the Chicago Reader (July 10, 1992). For more on Endfield, see my subsequent Reader article about him and my essay “Pages from the Endfield File,” which grew out of the preceding two pieces and is reprinted in my 1997 collection Movies as Politics. This particular piece has recently been upgraded in terms of illustrations. [...]

THE GAMBLER (1975 review)

From Monthly Film Bulletin, March 1975 (Vol. 42, No. 494). — J.R.

Gambler, The
U.S.A., 1974                                                   Director: Karel Reisz

The limitations and pretensions of James Toback’s script for

The Gambler are so formidable that it is difficult to conceive of any
director redeeming or transcending them. A Q.E.D. (indeed,
virtually ABC) demonstration of a masochist’s steady progress to
self-obliteration, peppered with ’significant’ [...]

Music For the Eyes [on Oskar Fischinger]

From the Chicago Reader, April 20, 2001; minor adjustments made on January 10, 2010. And for some major corrections and up-to-the-minute additions, see the letter from Cindy Keefer that has just arrived, which I’ve added to the end of this piece. — J.R.



Music for the Eyes: Films by Oskar Fischinger
By Jonathan Rosenbaum

While I was living [...]

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT (1975 review)

From Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1975 (Vol. 42, No. 493). — J.R.

Land that Time Forgot, The
Great Britain, 1974                          Director: Kevin Connor

A canister is tossed into the sea and discovered on the coast
of Land’s End, containing a manuscript by the American Bowen
Tyler which relates the following story: 1916. A British supply
ship is sunk by a German [...]

Criminal Genius [THIEVES]

This review of a major film, Andre Téchiné’s Les voleurs (Thieves), that was (perhaps typically, at least for this period) completely ignored in The New Yorker – along with Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man from the previous year — appeared in the December 27, 1996 issue of the Chicago Reader. –J.R.

Thieves
Rating **** Masterpiece
Directed by Andre Téchiné
Written [...]

Global Discoveries on DVD: Diverse Displacements (6th column)

From Cinema Scope #19 (Summer 2004). — J.R.


Joan Hawkins opens her book Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-garde (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000) with an interesting and useful observation:
“Open the pages of any horror fanzine —- Outré, Fangoria, Cinefantastique —- and you will find listings for mail-order video companies [...]

Hollywood Unchained [SPARTACUS]

From the May 10, 1991 Chicago Reader. –J.R.

SPARTACUS
*** (A must-see)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Dalton Trumbo
With Kirk Douglas, Jean Simmons, Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, John Gavin, and John Ireland.

“It has acres of dead people, more blood and gore than you ever saw in your whole life.
“In the final scene, Spartacus’s [...]

My Filmgoing in 1968: An Exploration

Written for the Viennale in 1998. — J.R.


In 1968, the year I turned 25, I bought my first appointment book — or at least the first appointment book that I’ve bothered to save, and I’ve saved all 30 of the appointment books that I’ve bought and filled since then. For the most part, I [...]

Prewar Jitters [on Lang’s MAN HUNT]

From the Chicago Reader (May 6, 2002). — J.R.



Man Hunt
*** (A must-see)
Directed by Fritz Lang
Written by Dudley Nichols
With Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders, John Carradine, Roddy McDowall, Heather Thatcher, and Frederick Worlock.

A sparkling new 35-millimeter print of Fritz Lang’s 1941 Man Hunt is running at the Gene Siskel Film Center all this [...]

SPIONE (1976 review)

From Monthly Film Bulletin, May 1976 (Vol. 43, No. 508). Many
years later, I revised and expanded this for an essay commissioned
by the Masters of Cinema DVD of Spione, called “Inside the Vault”. –- J.R.






Spione (The Spy)

Germany, 1928 Director: Fritz Lang


An unidentified European country. After two treaties are stolen

by [...]