Jonathan Rosenbaum's Blog: jonathanrosenbaum.com, page 15

Jarmusch Unlimited: THE LIMITS OF CONTROL

Even if he didn’t like Jim Jarmusch’s latest film, which I found immensely pleasurable and mesmerizing, I’m glad that Hollywood Reporter’s Michael Rechtshaffen at least picked up on the fact that Bill Murray, who turns up very late in the film, is “channeling” Dick Cheney when he does. This is by no means a gratuitous [...]

Female Perversions

From the Chicago Reader (May 2, 1997). — J.R.

An adventurous and sometimes sexy, if only fitfully successful, adaptation of Louise Kaplan’s celebrated nonfiction book by Susan Streitfeld, working with a script she wrote with Julie Hebert (1996). The focus is on the life of a successful single prosecutor (British actress Tilda Swinton, displaying an impeccable [...]

JOAN DOES DYNASTY (1986)

Written for The Unquiet American: Transgressive Comedies from the
U.S., a catalogue/collection put together to accompany a film series at the
Austrian Filmmuseum and the Viennale in Autumn 2009. — J.R.

Long before the advent of Slavoj Zizek, U.S.
academic Joan Braderman in 1986 offered a bracing
exercise in standup theory and comic deconstruction
in [...]

Short Cuts [COFFEE AND CIGARETTES]

This appeared in the May 28, 2004 issue of Chicago Reader. Coffee and Cigarettes, incidentally, proved to be one of the surprise hits of Jarmusch’s career — not as commercially successful as the subsequent Broken Flowers (though I prefer it to that), but more popular than anticipated. The overhead shots of expresso cups in a [...]

Brief Interview on the New Wave (Spring 2012)

From The Cine-Files, Spring 2012, issue 2. — J.R.


Bottom of Form



What for you makes the French New Wave such an exciting topic to study? Or… Is the French New Wave still an exciting topic to study?  What can moviegoers of the 21st century take away from French New Wave films?
For me, the greatness of [...]

Bridge Over Troubled Water [THE GRADUATE]

This originally appeared in the March 28, 1997 issue of the Chicago Reader.-— J.R.
Bridge Over Troubled Water





The Graduate **
Directed by Mike Nichols Written by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham With Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katherine Ross, William Daniels, Murray Hamilton, Elizabeth Wilson, and Brian [...]

Bunuel’s Neglected Masterpiece

From the Chicago Reader (October 8, 1993). — J.R.

THE YOUNG ONE
**** (Masterpiece)
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Written by “H.B. Addis” (Hugo Butler) and Buñuel
With Zachary Scott, Bernie Hamilton, Key Meersman, Crahan Denton, and Claudio Brook.


Let’s start with a dream scenario, a movie that might have been. What if Luis Buñuel had made a picture with an American [...]

The Taste of Ashes [SARABAND & BROKEN FLOWERS]

From the Chicago Reader (August 5, 2005). — J.R.


Saraband
** (Worth seeing)
Directed and written by Ingmar Bergman
With Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephon, Borje Ahlstedt, Julia Dufvenius, and Gunnel Fred
Broken Flowers
*** (A must see)
Directed and written by Jim Jarmusch
With Bill Murray, Julie Delpy, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Alexis Dziena, Frances Conroy, Christopher McDonald, Chloe Svigny, Jessica Lange, Tilda [...]

VIRIDIANA on DVD

From Cineaste, Vol. XXXI, No. 4, September 2006. — J.R.


Spoilers ahead: The title heroine (Silvia Pinal) of
Luis Buñuel’s masterpiece, a Spanish novice
about to take her final vows, is ordered by her
mother superior to visit her rich uncle (Fernando
Rey), Don Jaime, who’s been supporting her over
the years but whom she barely knows. A
necrophiliac foot [...]

Wind Across the Everglades

From the Chicago Reader (May 31, 2002). I’m pleased to remember that Studs Terkel, who knew Nick Ray, wrote me a friendly letter about this review shortly after it appeared — and that, years earlier (1995), when my first collection, Placing Movies, came out, he invited me to appear as a guest on his radio [...]