Jonathan Rosenbaum's Blog: jonathanrosenbaum.com, page 14

My Favorite Belgian DVD Box Set

From my Spring 2006 DVD column in Cinema Scope (“Global Discoveries on DVD”). Although this is sadly no longer in print, one can at least access most of its contents in an André Delvaux box set available here; and for more material about Delvaux in general and this film in particular, go here. — J.R.





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Besides Sideways

From the Chicago Reader (January 7, 2005). — J.R.

Ten film critics’ polls in Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, and Washington, D.C., have named Sideways the best movie of the year. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
It’s not that I have anything against comedies; last year Down With Love was [...]

MY PLEASURE IS MY BUSINESS (1975 review)

From Monthly Film Bulletin, April 1975 (Vol. 42, No. 495). — J.R.

My Pleasure Is My Business

Canada, 1974                                       Director: Albert S. Waxman

Deported from America by a U.S. senator who wants to keep her
away from his son-in-law, Gabrielle, a promiscuous movie star and
sexual liberationist, is flown to the country of Gestalt. After
confering with his aides, the [...]

Still Life

From the Chicago Reader (January 24, 2008). — J.R.

The fifth feature by Jia Zhang-ke, China’s greatest contemporary filmmaker, is set in the vicinity of China’s immense Three Gorges, where the ongoing construction of the world’s largest dam has already forced the relocation of almost two million people. Against this epic canvas, their paths crisscrossing but [...]

AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ (1975 review)

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


Ain’t Misbehavin’



Great Britain, 1974 Directors: Peter Neal, Anthony Stern







Cert–X (London). dist–Focus. p.c–Al0K Pictures Ltd. p–David

Speechley. ed–Peter Neal, Misha Norland. m/songs–”Please Be Kind”

performed by Django Reinhardt; “The Man I Love” by George Gershwin,

Ira Gershwin, performed by Django Reinhardt; “Honeysuckle Rose”,

“Ain’t Misbehavin’” by and [...]

Good Cop, Bad Cop (MIAMI BLUES & Q&A)

Since writing this for the April 27, 1990 issue of the Chicago Reader, I’ve become an even bigger fan of Charles Willeford’s four Hoke Moseley novels; some of their virtues remind me of John Updike’s novels about Rabbit Angstrom. My favorite of these Moseley novels remains Sideswipe. — J.R.



MIAMI BLUES
*** (A must-see)
Directed and written [...]

Miami Blues

From the Chicago Reader (April 1, 1990). — J.R.

People like myself who often despair of finding a cop-and-crime movie that isn’t encrusted in cliches should take to this wonderful sleeper by writer-director George Armitage (Vigilante Force), based on a novel by Charles Willeford (Cockfighter) and coproduced by Jonathan Demme. A small-time thief and ex-con (Alec [...]

Mark Cousins’ Excellent Adventure

From Film Comment (January-February 2013), with a few cuts made to this piece restored and the spelling of *Corpus Callosum (which Film Comment is determined never to get right, or even to acknowledge its former misspellings) corrected. I’ve retained their title, however, which is better than mine (”Mark Cousins’ Friendly and Innocent Odyssey”). — J.R.

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Austin Notebook: South by Southwest, 2010

From the Summer 2010 issue of Film Quarterly (vol. 63, no. 4). — J.R.



The typical challenge of any film festival report is to create a fictional narrative out of thin air, or a meaningful proposition out of chaos. And this becomes even harder in an era when layoffs of various film reviewers have coincided with [...]

A View From The Past [VALLEY OF ABRAHAM]

From the Chicago Reader (August 25, 1995). — J.R.

Valley of Abraham
*** (A must-see)
Directed and written by Manoel de Oliveira
With Leonor Silveira, Cecile Sanz de Alba, Luis Miguel Cintra, Rui de Carvalho, Luis Lima Barreto, Diogo Doria, Jose Pinto, and Isabel Ruth.

I think the most important intellectual discovery I’ve made in the past year came from [...]