Kansas City (1996) Plot should never be allowed to get in the way of Robert Altman’s love of Kansas City Jazz, unless to provide Harry Belafonte a choice role to perform.     If you’ve got brass, you’ve got enough class For one stroke of a note on the ivory coast To glow free of smoke from bar or factory After sweating all day in Chicago’s blast. There are gangsters all around with luck to burn And protection rackets bullet-proof as steel Vaults where pussy is kept in safe deposit Let out only to sing for the Chicago mob. Gravel in each stomp, an ice-pick scr ..read more

Strawberry Mansion (2021) Beware! In the future, the govenment will tax your dreams. Albert Birney and lead actor Kentucker Audley concocted this extraordinarily unpredictable exploration of the human psyche, as well as the nefarious implications of corporate advertising, among other things, in an homage to le fantastique in cinema. Fifteen years in the making, this independent film was released at Sundance in 2021. This has to be seen to be believed.   Proteus by the sea Dissembles prophesy By changing to words The reckless goatherds Carousing joyously, Shouting, “Proteus by the sea ..read more

  Devi (1960) The patriarch of a Calcutta family [Chhabi Biswas]  dreams that his daughter-in-law [Sharmila Tagore]  is the reincarnation of the Goddess Kali. Partly based on a story suggestion by Tagore, Satyajit Ray critiques the dangers of religious orthodoxy. The film was harshly criticized in its initial release, but today its portrait of idolization will strike most viewers as terrifyingly accurate. And the performance of Sharmila Tagore in the lead role remains haunting,   We were warned. The boob tube will dummy down The mind. That image is not real. Happy Childr ..read more

Rouge (1988) A melodramatic mix of ghost story with Hong Kong history allows Stanley Kwan to subvert issues of gender. The dead courtesan Fleur [Anita Mui] shows up at a newspaper office to place an ad for her lover [Leslie Cheung] with whom she committed suicide fifty years ago. The reporter [Alex Man] and his girlfriend [Emiiy Chu] agree to assist Fleur, and in the process rediscover their own relationship. What stands out most, however, is the juxtaposition of a vanished Hong Kong culture, full of art. Chinese Opera, and sexual oppression, with the modern city, glossy and superficial. Anita ..read more

Van Gogh (1990) Singer-songwirter Jacques Dutronc won a César for Best Actor in this revisionist biopic written and directed by Maurice Pialat. The film focuses on Von Gogh’s relationship with his physician, Paul Gachet [Gérard Séty], and Margurite [Alexandra London], the physician’s daughter. However, it descends into backroom cancan dances at the Folies Bergère, with a cameo appearance from Toulouse Lautrec. By that point, biographical insight has been eschewed for a raucous celebration of impressionists as hedonistic debauchees. Joanna [Corinne Bourdon] seems to editorialize for the direct ..read more

The Master (2012) Paul Thomas Anderson wrote and directed this study of master/acolyte power dynamics, with memorable performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd and Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell. Meglonomania and post-traumatic stress disorder discover brotherhood in one another, though a dependency of scoundrels running a cult, ending with this devastating insight —“If you figure a way to live without serving a Master… then let the rest of us know.”   The Master gains power from followers; He loves the more irrational ones best Because they will do what he dare not ri ..read more

In the Company of Wolves (1984) Angela Carter collaborated with Neil Jordan in this adaptation of her sado-masochistic rewrite of Charles Perrault’s fairy tales. Menstrual blood flows like Red Riding Hood’s cloak in these stories within stories where Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) dreams that she lives in a fairytale forest during the late 18th century. The stellar cast includes wily Angela Lansbury as the Grandmother in this gothic tale of female empowerment through feral transformations.   Her body resists tides from a full moon. She must deal with the animal inside Before that wishbone ..read more

Hôtel du Nord (1938) “Atmosphere! Atmsophere! Do I look like an atmosphere?”  With those words, Arletty stole the show and made cinema history. I will succumb to any movie where she appears. Guided by her director, Marcel Carné, she made the most of her supporting role as a no-nonsense prostitute living with her pimp, Louis Jouvet, in the Hôtel du Nord. Theirs is only one story that the hotel houses, and whether we relish the opening petit bourgeois family communion banquet or the concluding Bastille Day celebration, this cross-section of working-class people who reside along the Canal Sa ..read more

Color Out of Space (2019) H. P. Lovecraft has been notoriously difficult to adapt to film, but this production attempts to get the horror right, resulting in a psychedelic dissolution of the American family whose log cabin and alpaca herd are contaminated by a meteor that falls from the sky with its “color out of space.” Aided and abetted by Nicholas Cage as the father driven berserk by alien forces beyond his control, this movie has become a guilty pleasure. Richard Stanley was coaxed out of retirement to co-write and direct this picture, and Madeleine Arthur as the Wiccan teenage daughter st ..read more

The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969) Brian Forbes directed this theatrical masterpiece by Jean Giraudoux in Maurice Valency‘s adaption (with a screenplay by Edward Anhalt). aided and abetted by the cinematography of Burnett Guffey and Claude Renoir. Shot in Nice and Paris, Katherine Hapburn flounces about with histrionic flamboyance as the Countess Aurelia, in this allegory concerning the predatory nature of capitalism. A group of prominent men believe there is oil under the streets of Paris and connive to purchase property in order to drill there.  During a mock trial, Danny Kaye steals the ..read more