Jonathan Rosenbaum's Blog: jonathanrosenbaum.com, page 7

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

From the Chicago Reader (May 2008). — J.R.


The unholy mix of George Lucas’s colonialist nostalgia and Steven Spielberg’s fluency with action becomes more self-conscious in this fourth Indiana Jones outing. In 1957, two decades after the events of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the hero (Harrison Ford) joins forces with his old flame from [...]

Jazz: The Intimate Art (1977 review)

From Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1977. — J.R.



Jazz: The Intimate Art

U.S.A., 1968 Director: (not credited)



Dist — TCB. p.c — Drew Associates. For the Bell System. p — Robert Drew,
Mike Jackson. assoc. p – Harry Moses. p. co-ordinator — Jean Swain.
sc — (not credited). ph – Abbot Mills, Juliana Wang, Ralph Weisinger.
asst. ph — Bill [...]

HELSINKI, FOREVER and Cinema, Now

Happy Birthday, Peter von Bagh. The following was written for a book celebrating his 70th birthday. — J.R.


Preface
Peter von Bagh is the man who convinced me to purchase my first multiregional VCR in the early 1980s. So he has a lot to answer for — including, just for starters, my DVD column in Cinema [...]

Both Sides of John Cassavetes

From The Movie, Chapter 65, 1981. -– J.R.


One of the most paradoxical and controversial of all the American independents, John Cassavetes has always placed actors and acting at the center of his film-making conceptions. An actor himself, he has used his craft as a means of financing his own productions — which are themselves celebrations [...]

The Significance of Sniggering (CRUMB)

From the Chicago Reader (June 2, 1995). This piece is quite separate from the essay I recently contributed to Criterion’s DVD of this film, available here. — J.R.


Crumb
Rating **** Masterpiece
Directed by Terry Zwigoff

Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb in many ways looks like conventional filmmaking, yet it conveys a remarkable fluidity and density of thought. It may resemble [...]

The Aged One (1957 poem)

From Junior Scholastic, Vol. 40, No. 15 (May 17, 1957). This poem won first prize in their writing awards, poetry division. My bio in that issue: “JONATHON [sic] ROSENBAUM says his poem grew out of a speech he wrote for his Bar Mitzvah. This is a ceremony at which Jewish boys of 13 enter into [...]

Kiarostami at Work [10 on TEN]

From the Chicago Reader (October 29, 2004). — J.R.

10 on Ten
*** (A must-see)
Directed and written by Abbas Kiarostami
With Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami’s recent features satisfy few of the usual expectations about narrative films. Yet in 10 on Ten – a documentary about his most recent feature, 10, showing twice this week at the Gene Siskel Film Center–he [...]

To score or not to score

From The Financial Times (July 4, 1975); this was the first of my two annual weekly film columns for that newspaper, replacing Nigel Andrews as his “deputy” while he was away.

A couple of asides: I had attended the press conference at Cannes for The Panic in Needle Park, and recall being disturbed [...]

Wholesale Memories [TOTAL RECALL]

From the Chicago Reader (June 8, 1990). — J.R.

TOTAL RECALL
*** (A must-see)
Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Written by Ronald Shusett, Dan O’Bannon, Jon Povill, and Gary Goldman
With Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox, Michael Ironside, Mel Johnson Jr., and Marshall Bell.
The most influential SF movies of the past two decades are still very much [...]

Car Wash (1977 review)

From Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1977 (Vol. 44, No. 517). This is a movie I clearly went overboard about, even though I still might be inclined to defend it today, and I suspect now that I simply missed the boat by ignoring the screenwriter, Joel Schumacher — who, on the evidence of the subsequent D.C. [...]