J. D. Markel

How Easy Rider laid the groundwork for Wild Hogs

Daniel Smith-Rowsey

Hippies and radicals, back of the (cultural) bus

“Leontev’s rhetoric, though overblown, might strike a chord in those who lament the replacement of honest, inspired amateurism with the interchangeable bodies of the trousered professional class. But wait . . . the polka tremblante?”

Weren’t they here all along?

“That what we now call ‘the media’ could be a threat to society was not necessarily an unknown topic before television. From the 1930s, movies had recognized the manipulative side of the press.”

“Black hair is set off by bright colour, and these women often resembled blocks of pure pigment. They look ravishing but only half-alive . . . even the tough-talking Gardner looks like an image painted onto the screen.”

Tom Vick

“If the technical advancement of cinema now means that nature has been conquered, and most movies take place in a meteorological nowheresville created in a digital effects lab (where the weather is either hyper-real or airlessly unpresent), it strikes me as significant that the weather, the presence of the seasons, persists so strongly in Korean cinema, even as it has grown to rival Hollywood in sophistication, ambition, and technical achievement.”

“One reason for [Carrie's] success in both print and film, I think, lies in this: Carrie’s revenge is something that any student who ever had his gym shorts pulled down in Phys Ed or his glasses thumb-rubbed in study hall could approve of. In Carrie’s destruction of the gym . . . we see a dream revolution of the socially downtrodden.”

Thomas A. Horne

“I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.” – Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) in The Departed

Brian Grady

“Fatherhood, in a sense of a conscious begetting, is unknown to man.” — James Joyce, Ulysses

Mark Player

“An incessant downpour dominates every exterior scene, and even some interior ones through sound. Water becomes a central motif, from Rinko relaxing contemplatively in the bath to Shigehiko watching people drown in the tank.”

Matthew Shields

“To call any work of von Trier’s life affirming, especially one that ends in, of all things, the apocalypse, must seem seriously misguided. Life affirmation in von Trier? The most notoriously nihilistic director of his generation? But surprising as it sounds, a close reading of the film reveals that this reevaluation is just what he is after.”

The horror lingers and seeps; the feelings are sponged away.” — Anthony Lane, “Road Kill” The New Yorker September 26, 2011

“Cronenberg’s method, it seems, is perfectly suited for making truly historical dramas, stripping away our tendency to read individuals through their writings in something like the way diseases in his films strip his characters down to their essences.”

“Some of the most refreshing aspects of Ghost Protocol are the ways in which it defies so many of the accepted conventions of modern action movies, most of which can probably be attributed to Bird’s economic and meticulous mise en scène.”

Jayson Harsin

“The original industrial accidents as, for instance, the derailment of a train or the crash of an airplane, were all specific, localized, and particular accidents. They were taking place at a certain place and at a certain moment in time. Now, however, the revolution of instantaneous transmissions brought about by telecommunications makes the accident global.” — Paul Virilio

Vlad Dima

“‘If you ever wonder where your dreams come from, look around: this is where they’re made.’ Maybe the value of Scorsese’s film lies exactly in this sentence and the context in which it is delivered.”

Colleen McGuire

“The perverted subtext is that black maids ain’t squeamish about shit the way these prissy white ladies were.”

“Marion’s character in Thundercrack!, the daft and delusional farm widow Gert Hammond, harkened back to a much more handcrafted Tennessee Williamsesque archetype. She infuses Gert with real pathos as well as genuine creepiness in a series of hauntingly photographed monologues that transcend the film’s threadbare conceits.”

“Bob and the new people he introduced us to were very inspiring because it meant to me, by seeing them, that you can get older and still run around in a world of uncharted horizons.” — George Kuchar

Anuj Malhotra

“Endless self-parody is not a ‘new idea’ — and unless conducted with the awareness of the irony inherent in the process, it is a prank a person may play for years before realizing the joke is on him.”

Kendra Bean

“[Vivien Leigh] is, I should say, the most important recruit British films have ever had . . . She is still not at all keen on going to Hollywood. She could go any day if she said the word. It’s up to the English studios to develop her over here.”  —  Picturegoer, April 3, 1937

Graham Daseler

“‘You can’t control life,’ he tells us in that film. ‘”It doesn’t wind up perfectly. Only art you can control. Art and masturbation.’”

“It is within this vortex of social and political upheaval that Greek filmmakers have found some traction, creating sharp, insightful works that raise awareness while revealing unflattering truths about Greek society and the current ‘crisis.’”