Jonathan Rosenbaum's Blog: jonathanrosenbaum.com, page 16

The Man From London

From the Chicago Reader (October 4, 2007). — J.R.


After the more complicated story lines of Satantango and Werckmeister Harmonies, Hungarian master Bela Tarr boils a Georges Simenon novel down to a few primal essentials: a railway worker in a dank and decaying port town witnesses a crime while stationed on a tower and then stumbles [...]

How to Read a Movie [STONE READER]

From the Chicago Reader (July 18, 2003). — J.R.

Stone Reader
*** (A must-see)
Directed and written by Mark Moskowitz.
Cinema has traditionally been regarded as the art that encompasses all the other arts. But start considering how successfully cinema encompasses any particular art form and the premise falls apart.

Filmed theater, opera, ballet, and musical performance omit the existential [...]

John Cassavetes Obituary

From Sight and Sound, Spring 1989. — J.R.


The news of John Cassavetes’ death reached the Rotterdam Festival just as his
retrospective was winding to a close, and my initial response was to recall
Billy Wilder’s remark at Ernst Lubitsch’s funeral. ‘No more Lubitsch,’ a friend said,
and Wilder replied, ‘Worse than that — [...]

The Delmer Daves Problem

Written for my En movimiento column for the July-August 2013 issue of Caiman Cuadernos de Cine. – J.R.

“Many of Delmer Daves’s films are beloved, but to say that he remains a misunderstood and insufficiently appreciated figure in the history of American movies is a rank understatement.” This is how critic Kent Jones begins the second [...]

Two George Landow/Owen Land Films

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.







WIDE ANGLE SAXON (1976)
This comic short by Owen Land from 1976 could
conceivably be regarded as the Hellzapoppin of the
American experimental film. [...]

Sex and Drugs and Death and Writing [NAKED LUNCH]

From the Chicago Reader (January 17, 1992). — J.R.


NAKED LUNCH **** (Masterpiece)
Directed and written by David Cronenberg
With Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, Roy Scheider, Monique Mercure, Michael Zelniker, and Nicholas Campbell.
And some of us are on Different Kicks and that’s a thing out in the open the way I [...]

Let the Music Do the Talking [on JAZZ ‘34]

This defense of what I consider Robert Altman’s most neglected major work appeared in the May 8, 1998 issue of the Chicago Reader. I’ve deliberately refrained from including any stills from Kansas City — its “parent” film, which I continue to dislike. –  J.R.


Jazz ‘34: Remembrances of Kansas City Swing
Rating *** A must see
Directed by [...]

REAL LIFE (1979)

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.


The brassy and obnoxious show-biz type that
Albert Brooks plays in his first and funniest feature
(1979) –- so close to Brooks’s own public [...]

Peter Thompson, R.I.P.

Born July 24, 1944, San Mareno, California. Died May 23, 2013, Chicago, Illinois.
Here’s something I said at a special tribute to Peter held in his presence at Columbia College, on October 4, 2012:
“For me, Peter Thompson is one of those special filmmakers who reinvents cinema for his own purposes, a trait that he shares not [...]

Global Discoveries on DVD: Tips for Landlocked Yanks and Monolinguists (my 10th column)

From Cinema Scope No. 34, Summer 2005. — J.R.




As an avid collector of Hollywood musicals, I’ve recently been checking out which items in my collection with optional French dialogue also have French versions of the songs. My father used to teach himself foreign languages by reading translations of some of his favorite English and American [...]