Jonathan Rosenbaum's Blog: jonathanrosenbaum.com, page 29

Pryor Commitments [upgraded, 11/14/11]

The current [2013] Richard Pryor retrospective being held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which runs through February 21, has made me think that it’s worth reposting this ancient article of mine, which I regard as one of my better pieces about comedy.
It would obviously be hyperbolic for me to claim that the editorial [...]

Conflicting Accounts [WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN?]

From the Chicago Reader (May 19, 1989). — J.R.

WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN?
** (Worth seeing)
Directed by Christine Choy.
Item: The December 22, 1941, issue of Life magazine features a two-page spread headlined “How to Tell Japs From the Chinese: Angry Citizens Victimize Allies With Emotional Outburst at Enemy.” It begins: “In the first discharge of emotions touched [...]

For Your Eyes Only [on Beatty’s DICK TRACY]

From the Chicago Reader (June 15, 1990).
Regarding Peter Biskind’s hyperbolic overestimation of Beatty, then and now — matched in a way by Beatty’s own jokey comparison of Biskind to Trotsky, as reported by Biskind in his recent and sometimes unwittingly hilarious Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America (2010) — it seems that this has [...]

Reflections on “Rivette in Context”

From Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema, Volume 1, No. 1, 2012 (a Spanish academic online journal, available at http://www.ocec.eu/cinemacomparative/...) — J.R.









“Rivette in Context” had two separate incarnations, occurring a year and a half apart. The first consisted of 28 programs presented at London’s National Film Theatre in August 1977, to accompany the publication of Rivette: Texts and [...]

How the West Was Butchered [PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID]

From the Chicago Reader (March 16, 1990). — J.R.

PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID
** (Worth seeing)
Directed by Sam Peckinpah
Written by Rudolph Wurlitzer
With James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan, Jason Robards, John Beck, Barry Sullivan, Slim Pickens, Katy Jurado, Jack Elam, Harry Dean Stanton, and Chill Wills.

Sometimes it’s hard to know if the film you’re seeing [...]

Review of STAR-GAZER

From Film Quarterly (Spring 1974). I wrote this review while I was living in Paris, which made acquiring a review copy especially difficult. (I grimly recall even getting into something resembling a fistfight with the French distributor of the book, who didn’t want to give me one and blew a fuse when I insisted, [...]

Stavisky…

From the Chicago Reader (May 1, 1989). — J.R.

Alain Resnais’ comeback in 1974 after five years’ absence (precipitated by the commercial failure of Je t’aime, je t’aime), and like many other of his films, it has improved with age. Scripted by Jorge Semprun (La guerre est finie, Z), it tells the true story of a [...]

THE LATE MATHIAS PASCAL (1976 review)

From Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1976 (Vol. 43, No. 505). A tinted restoration of this film was presented at Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato with a beautiful, large-orchestra score composed and conducted by Timothy Brock a few years back, and I must say that this very impressive presentation substantially transformed my original skepticism, fully demonstrating how [...]

The Late Mathias Pascal (1976 review)

From Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1976 (Vol. 43, No. 505). A tinted restoration of this film was presented at Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato with a beautiful, large-orchestra score composed and conducted by Timothy Brock a few years back, and I must say that this very impressive presentation substantially transformed my original skepticism, fully demonstrating how [...]

THE ROMANTIC ENGLISHWOMAN (1975 review)

From Monthly Film Bulletin, October 1975. — J.R.


Romantic Englishwoman, The
Great Britain/France, 1975                             Director: Joseph Losey

Elizabeth Fielding arrives in Baden Baden on holiday; on the
same train is Thomas Hursa, carrying a supply of drugs, which he
hides on the roof of the luxury hotel where Elizabeth is staying.
Her husband Lewis, a successful novelist now at work on [...]