Jonathan Rosenbaum's Blog: jonathanrosenbaum.com, page 43

A Walk on the Wilde Side [AN IDEAL HUSBAND]

From the Chicago Reader (June 25, 1999). — J.R.

An Ideal Husband
Rating *** A must see
Directed by Oliver Parker
Written by Oscar Wilde and Parker
With Cate Blanchett, Minnie Driver, Rupert Everett, Julianne Moore, Jeremy Northam, John Wood, Lindsay Duncan, Peter Vaughan, and Jeroen Krabbe.

Reviewing a collection of Oscar Wilde’s critical writings almost 30 years ago, Cyril Connolly [...]

Le Trio Infernal, Un Homme Qui Dort, Steppenwolf

From Oui (December 1974). – J.R.



Le Trio lnfernal. It’s the Christmas season and Michel Piccoli shoots a man in
the eye — straight through a newspaper he’s reading — while downstairs, Romy
Schneider is finishing off Andrea Ferreol with similar dispatch. The bodies are
stripped clean and plunked into adjacent bathtubs, which Piccoli promptly
fills with sulfuric acid. [...]

Modern Messiah [JESUS OF MONTREAL]

From the Chicago Reader (July 20, 1990). — J.R.

JESUS OF MONTREAL
*** (A must-see)
Directed and written by Denys Arcand
With Lothaire Bluteau, Catherine Wilkening, Johanne-Marie Tremblay, Remy Girard, Robert Lepage, Gilles Pelletier, Yves Jacques, and Arcand.

It must have been about 30 years ago that I saw Jules Dassin’s He Who Must Die, a popular art-house movie [...]

Notes on the Work of John Cassavetes

These program notes for a John Cassavetes retrospective were commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art’s Film Department, which as I recall edited them fairly substantially. (My subsequent “review” of the retrospective for The Soho News, “The Tyranny of Sensitivity,” is already available on this site.) I no longer have the unedited version, but I’ve [...]

Defenseless [THE LUZHIN DEFENCE]

From the Chicago Reader (May 4, 2001). — J.R.

The Luzhin Defence
Directed by Marleen Gorris
Written by Peter Berry
With John Turturro, Emily Watson, Geraldine James, Stuart Wilson, and Christopher Thompson.

In Slate last March two film critics with literary backgrounds, Phillip Lopate and A.O. Scott, argued about Terence Davies’s adaptation of The House of Mirth – an exchange [...]

Two Nights of an Extra: Working with Bresson

From the Village Voice (April 25, 1971). This was the first piece I ever published there, and I’ve done a light edit (in October 2012) in order to make it a little more bearable to me. The “Pakistani girl” [sic] mentioned here, who subsequently became a very good friend, was Munni Kabir; as Nasreen [...]

Temple of Dumb [INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE]

From the Chicago Reader (June 2, 1989). — J.R.

INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE * (Has redeeming facet)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by Jeffrey Boam, George Lucas, and Menno Meyjes
With Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, River Phoenix, Denholm Elliott, Alison Doody,
Julian Glover, and John Rhys-Davies.

Nazis are fun! Jesus is fun! Arthurian legends are fun! Third world [...]

A Master Index To This Site (as of October 1, 2012)

Trevor Vartanoff, one of the frequenters of this web site, has just come up with an invaluable gift to me and to others — an alphabetical master index of all the postings here, complete with links. “I found it useful,” Trevor just wrote me, “maybe you or readers will too.” — J.R.
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Featured Texts


*Corpus Callosum
12 Monkeys
12 [...]

Oleanna

From the Chicago Reader (October 21, 2007). — J.R.


I haven’t seen David Mamet’s controversial two-character play on the stage, but his own film adaptation (2007) is easily his best movie since House of Games. The two characters are a pontificating, bullying male college professor (William H. Macy) up for tenure and his initially cowed, eventually [...]

Course File on Experimental Film (Part 2) (1982)

From AFI Education Newsletter (January-February 1982). Because of the length of this, I’ll be running it in two installments. — J.R.

Course File:


EXPERIMENTAL FILM:
FROM UN CHIEN ANDALOU TO CHANTAL AKERMAN (Part 2)




UNIT III: German and Soviet Experimentation in the Twenties


Part of the strategy of studying German and Soviet experimentation over roughly the same period is [...]