"Allowing his acidity unfettered reign, Fassbinder concocts one of the most blistering excoriations of despotism ever committed to film."

"Peer pressure is either a boon or a bitch with the power to destroy the world, or save it."

"Where Williamson is highly critical of films that encourage us to consume lifestyles, Wolcott's writing appears to be an appreciation of surfaces — in fact, his whole style can be read as an analysis of '50s textures and design elements."

"The films of the Coen brothers seem to take place in a postmodern Chelm, displaced chronologically and geographically."

"It was once the figurehead of a slave ship. That's where our people come from. From the misery and pain of slavery." ~ I Walked with a Zombie

And staying forever young

You'll come for the irony, you'll stay for the tits.

"The explicit nature of this wave of filmmaking can be interpreted as a riposte to modern cultural sensibilities."

"I want my favorites to get the high ratings — my judgments are being challenged by anonymous forces whom I cannot confront."

Kubrick in embryo

"Divine is as unstoppable as nature, destined to repeatedly transgress, destroy, and create."

Hand me those contacts!

On Bright Lights, online film writing, and the collection he recently edited, Action! Interviews with Directors from Classical Hollywood to Contemporary Iran

Vampires? Yeah, we've got that. Oh, and Michelangelo too

"Cameron is Hollywood's dream boy: a superficial auteur with impeccable brand recognition."

Can quantity trump quality? Not so much

"Anderson, like Dahl, seems to have told a story to appeal to a child's inner adult."

"The film suggests the denial of the common worker, whose service to industry is only as worthy as his social status." 

"The Jazz Baroness goes beyond the barrel of stereotypes the screeching monkeys of society use against the intricate gusts of life swirling about us." Really!

Don't worry or question; just consume — oh, and kill

"The shadow of Mabuse falls over the 1926 Soviet adventure serial Miss Mend, too, but without the angst and gloom of Lang's Der Spieler."

Director Frank Barabont hijacks — and sinks — Stephen King's powerful allegory of political oppression

"The camera has a motor, you just turn it on and walk away" ~ Andy Warhol

"The Grenouille of the film experiences an emotional epiphany that does not bring him humanity, but at least makes him yearn for its possibilities." 

"Hillcoat and his crew have taken the book's hints and modeled their scavenging pair on contemporary images of homeless people, who already, as Hillcoat aptly puts it, are 'living that apocalyptic world of day-to-day survival on the streets with no money and no food.'"

The result is satire that doesn't breathe."

"With Zodiac, obsession becomes the point of origin, the catalyst for artistic creation."

"I always say, keep a diary and some day it'll keep you."~ Mae West 

"What is it, love trouble or money trouble? I've seen them all, I've seen all the troubles in the world, and they boil down to just those two. You're broke, or you're lonely. Or both."

"What you got was what you saw, a man with a soldier's training speaking ever so nicely and trying not to stretch himself beyond his abilities as an actor." ~ David Niven

"The only thing that is absolutely important for me is quality." 

"Valentino said there's nothing like tile for a tango!" ~ Norma Desmond to Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard (1950) 

"Arriaga's use of eroticism and semi-incest between respective children of the two illicit lovers is more than a pastiche; it's an organic outgrowth from an idea."

"My interest in creating visual worlds is what led me to both painting and film."

On Art, Identity, Families, Fragmentation, Medication . . . and Fulfillment

An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases