Jonathan Rosenbaum's Blog: jonathanrosenbaum.com, page 6

Early Kubrick: An Exchange with James Naremore

The following was written in February 2009 for a projected volume on Stanley Kubrick that was being prepared at the time by the Chicago-based magazine Stop Smiling, which commissioned this and a few shorter pieces by me for it, including a short “sidebar” text about James Naremore’s On Kubrick, written in April 2010, which I’ve [...]

Notes on Friday’s Film [SUNRISE] (1963)

From The Bard Observer, May 7, 1963. For me, one of my formative experiences of film as an art form was a screening of Sunrise at Columbia University’s Macmillan Theater during one of my first three semesters of college, at New York University, before I transferred to Bard College, two hours up the Hudson River, [...]

Strangeness on a Train [on von Trier’s ZENTROPA/EUROPA]

From the Chicago Reader (July 3, 1992). This marks my first encounter with Lars von Trier. — J.R.

ZENTROPA
*** (A must-see)
Directed by Lars von Trier
Written by von Trier and Niels Vorsel
With Jean-Marc Barr, Barbara Sukowa, Udo Kier, Ernst-Hugo Jaregard, Erik Mork, Jorgen Reenberg, Henning Jensen, Eddie Constantine, and the voice of Max von Sydow.
Lars von [...]

The Mattei Affair (1975 review)

From Monthly Film Bulletin, June 1975 (Vol. 42, No. 497). — J.R.



Caso Mattei, Il (The Mattei Affair)


Italy, 1972                                                                Director: Francesco Rosi

27 October, 1962. The private plane of Enrico Mattei, president of ENI (Ente Nazional Idrocarburi), flying from Sicily to Milan, crashes in Bascape, killing the pilot Bertuzzi, the Time-Life reporter McHale [...]

State of the Art [on TIME CODE & KHROUSTALIOV, MY CAR!]

From the April 28, 2000 issue of the Chicago Reader. I was just reminded of Khroustaliov, My Car! when, thanks to Roger Alan Koza, I recently discovered a more recent and rather amazing feature by the son of Alexi Guerman (or German), Alexei Guerman Jr.’s Paper Soldier (2008). — J.R.


Fun and infuriating in roughly equal [...]

Letter to Sight and Sound about SPITE MARRIAGE (1971)

From Sight and Sound, Spring 1971. This letter, which preceded my first article for the magazine by a little over a year, was mainly prompted by my having attended a public screening of a Keaton feature in London with a ruinous piano accompaniment. –- J.R.



SIR, — John Gillett’s comments about Spite Marriage in the [...]

Sex and the Single Codger (THE LAST GOOD TIME)

This appeared in the May 5, 1995 issue of the Chicago Reader. — J.R.

The Last Good Time
Rating *** A must see
Directed by Bob Balaban
Written by Balaban and John McLaughlin
With Armin Mueller-Stahl,Olivia d’Abo, Lionel Stander,Maureen Stapleton, Kevin Corrigan, Adrian Pasdar, and Zohra Lampert.
Bob Balaban, a native Chicagoan who’s best known as a prolific movie and stage [...]

First Look: Faat Kiné

From Film Comment (January-February 2001). –- J.R.



I blush to admit that I’ve still seen only half the eight features to date of Ousmane Sembene, made over a 33-year period as a supplement to his dozen or so volumes of fiction. Yet considering how difficult it generally is to track his remarkable and varied work on [...]

60s Wisdom [CANDY MOUNTAIN]

It seems like one way of characterizing a Robert Frank film nowadays would be to say that it’s likely a film for which it’s almost impossible to find any adequate illustrations on the Internet. This is why I’m mainly had to depend on a couple of posters here, as well as the book jacket for [...]

Early Film Reviews (August 1964)

Two movie columns published in Summer ’64, a newspaper published by Columbia University and Teachers College in August 1964, while I was attending summer school there in Manhattan. I recall having seen Hitchcock’s Marnie and Renoir’s Boudu Saved From Drowning that same summer for the same publication, and reviewed at least the former, but apparently [...]