Jonathan Rosenbaum's Blog: jonathanrosenbaum.com, page 20

André Delvaux’s Buried Treasures

This was written in late 2012 and early 2013 for the March-April 2013 issue of Film Comment, but this magazine’s editor loves to improvise the contents of every issue at the last moment, and this article has already been edited, scheduled, and then pulled from two separate issues. Rather than run the risk of this [...]

American Beauty [on Chris Petit’s NEGATIVE SPACE]

From the May 12, 2000 issue of the Chicago Reader.  –J.R.


Negative Space
Rating *** A must see
Directed and written by Chris Petit
With Robert Mitchum, Manny Farber, Dave Hickey, and (as narrator) Petit.

There aren’t many films or videos about film criticism, especially ones that perform the actual work of film criticism. An interesting and ambitious exception is [...]

Resnais’ Secrets

This is my 31st “En movimiento” column for Caiman Cuadernos de Cine, formerly known as the Spanish Cahiers du Cinéma, written in late March, 2013. — J.R.

After recently having caught up with Alain Resnais’ magisterial Vous n’avez encore rien vu, I belatedly discovered from diverse sources on the Internet that “Axel Reval,” the credited cowriter [...]

Good Men, Good Women

From the Chicago Reader (July 26, 1996). — J.R.




Like its predecessors, the concluding and entirely self-sufficient feature in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s epic trilogy about the history of Taiwan in the 20th century — a landmark in Taiwanese cinema along with Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day — focuses on a specific period and a specific art [...]

La Petite Marchande d’Allumettes

From Monthly Film Bulletin, April 1975 (Vol. 42, No. 496). — J.R.





Petite Marchande d’Allumettes, La

(The Little Match Girl)



France, 1928



Directors: Jean Renoir, Jean Tedesco





Cert-U. dist–Contemporary. p–Jean Renoir, Jean Tedesco . asst. d–

Claude H eymann. Simone Hamiguet. Sc–Jean Renoir. Based on the

storv bv Hans Christian Andersen. ph–Jean [...]

Hell on Wheels

From the March 1, 1996 issue of the Chicago Reader. —J.R.

Taxi Driver
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Written by Paul Schrader
With Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd, Albert Brooks, Peter Boyle, Leonard Harris, Steven Prince, and Martin Scorsese.

Perhaps the most formally ravishing — as well as the most morally and ideologically problematic — film ever [...]

Cinema as Social Practice, Today and Yesterday: Confessions of a Cinephile

Written for the Mexican magazine La Tempestad (No. 85), which published it in Spanish translation in late 2012. It was published online in February 2013, and because the promised payment for this article never materialized (an experience matched by that of other contributors I’ve spoken to), I have no compunctions about publishing it here in [...]

Apocalypse Now Redux

From the Chicago Reader (August 10, 2001). — J.R.

There’s certainly a lot more footage — 53 minutes, to be precise — which makes this better in certain ways than the original Apocalypse Now, though the flaws are also magnified. (Kurtz’s Cambodian savages slaughtering a caribou — actually, it’s a Filipino ceremony — and kneeling before [...]

Conversation with Jim Jarmusch (2001)

Part of a booklet accompanying a Jim Jarmusch retrospective at the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, October 2001. The same booklet included short texts by Jarmusch on Robert Mitchum, John Cassavetes, and Samuel Fuller, and Jim paired his own films with various favorites of his by others, which this conversation [...]

THE MOVIEGOER WHO KNEW TOO MUCH

I’ve already blurbed this book, both on this site for its French edition and on Amazon for its e-book Kindle edition (where you can also read a couple of perceptive five-star reviews from other fans), so let me just reiterate here that if you haven’t yet checked this sucker out, you’ve got a lot of [...]