The Frenchman, Maurice Tourneur, and the Austrian, Richard Oswald, were major producer/directors during cinema’s Silent Era, but are hardly remembered today. These days, movie lovers are more likely to know the films and television shows directed by their sons — Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, Out of the Past), and Gerd Oswald (Brainwashed, Screaming ... read more »

Like Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., Christopher Nolan’s Inception, or Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York, Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch invites the viewer to deconstruct a narrative puzzle – nested realities, stories embedded within stories – that in Snyder’s case allows him to present a series of meticulously rendered alternate worlds. As anybody who has seen or read ... read more »

Producer as Auteur - The Exile is a swashbuckler, written by, produced by, and starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.  It was the first American film to be completed by the German-Jewish director, Max Ophuls.  It was plainly a vanity project for producer/star Fairbanks in which he played an exiled King (Charles II of England) who, as conceived by Fairbanks ... read more »

by MATTHEW SORRENTO Guillermo del Toro has discussed how his childhood helped mold his imagination – being raised in a stern Roman Catholic family only fueled his dark fantasies. His great-aunt, a prevalent influence and caregiver, forbade him from drawing gothic and grotesque images, encouraging his passion to grow. These fantasies would become essential to his ... read more »

Note: this review discusses major plot points but doesn’t reveal the surprising turn. Much of what is discussed below can be found in the promotional material. Catfish opens in Philadelphia this weekend, at the Ritz East, 125 South 2nd Street. On Saturday, September 25, the filmmakers will be present for Q&As after the following screenings: ... read more »

Director Robert Siodmak was born on August 8, 1900, in Dresden, Germany. If alive today, he would be 110. In 1994, in an article entitled Beyond the Golden Age: Film Noir Since the ’50s, I wrote: It is almost (but not quite) a rule of thumb that the more personal a director’s vision, the less ... read more »

Classic films come about through a lucky combination of accident and inspiration. In the case of THE GODFATHER, one of writer/director Francis Coppola’s most inspired choices was to model his film not on other American gangster movies, but instead upon the visual style and structure of  Luchino Visconti’s 1963 masterpiece, THE LEOPARD (IL GATTOPARDO).  By choosing Visconti as his model, Coppola infused new life ... read more »

Talk about wish fulfillment for kids – the Airbender mythos has it nailed. As a child dreams of gaining superpowers, he may wish for them all: i.e, the numerous abilities of Superman. If his wishes grow darker, he may desire fangs and a cape, and the ability to fly by night in darkness – or perhaps ... read more »

Call this a western exploitation film. Jonah Hex, based on a comic book series of the same name, has much more action than thought or sense. It borrows from the western with little understanding of the genre, which is, perhaps, a moot point. To much of the target audience, the genre is a haze of ... read more »

No one with eyes and a brain could seriously dispute Nicholas Ray’s role as the primary auteur of Bigger Than Life. All you need to do is watch Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause and Bigger Than Life back-to-back to see that both films are the work of the same filmmaker, sharing a nearly identical approach to performance (pushed ... read more »