I’m of the generation where somebody at my high school graduation moonwalked up the aisle. I was embarrassed for him and for society. I never liked breakdancing; I found its forced, robotic moves anathema to the graceful athletics of a Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly, whose movies I was anachronistically drawn to while the rest of the teenage world learned …

Placing Roman Polanski within the parameters of the auteur theory isn’t the simple task it is for other directors. Despite enjoying rampant success in America, Polanski belongs to world of European cinematic modernism, a style he attempted to adapt to American classicism on more than one occasion, most notably in Chinatown. Polanski, like many of his characters, is something of …

With a terrific cast headed by Harrison Ford, the biggest movie star of the day, and a hell of a pedigree— including screenwriter Paul Schrader, a frequent collaborator with Martin Scorsese, as well as director Peter Weir and producer Jerome Hellman—The Mosquito Coast must have seemed a surefire hit during the holiday movie season. But critics were lukewarm to the …

The Searchers appeared for the blink of an eye at this year’s Academy Awards, one of a scant handful of films made before 1990 featured in one of those inane, pandering montages. That Ethan Edwards was included in a tribute of great cinematic heroes, however, speaks to how enduringly half-understood and willfully forgotten John Ford’s great, challenging work remains, and …

Cate Blanchett is currently receiving endless accolades for her performance as wounded trophy wife Jasmine French in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, but the role is not entirely new territory for her. On paper Blue Jasmine has a lot in common with one of her previous – and largely forgotten – films: Bandits. Bear with me here. Bandits sees Blanchett portray …

I’ve never been overly fond of the terms “overrated” and “underrated.” They imply a superiority on behalf of those who use them, a boastfulness that this one wizened viewer has seen what everyone else has not. Even so, I do enjoy writing under the banner of “underrated” for the purposes of reintroducing ignored or reviled films and filmmakers to discussion. …

Boy meets girl, boy loses girl and boy gets her back again in a cinematic whirlwind that recalls German Expressionism as filtered through a Las Vegas floorshow. Francis Ford Coppola’s opulent 1982 film, One from the Heart, was the director’s first project after the harrowing shoot of Apocalypse Now. Wouldn’t you want to take on something lighter after an over-budget …

For a filmmaker like Steven Spielberg, financially speaking the most successful director of all time, serious critical evaluation is best approached with as little elitist baggage as possible. After all, nobody else has made more money making movies than he has, and like it or not, critical circumspection is often a byproduct of commercial success. But Spielberg has been more …

Kenneth Branagh’s directorial forays outside of Shakespeare are few but varied. His adaptation of Frankenstein was widely viewed as a critical failure. The Marvel blockbuster Thor is his most recent and certainly his most uncharacteristic directorial effort. Yet one of his non-Shakespearean efforts makes a strong case for its inclusion along with Henry V and Hamlet in the list of …

Character actor heavy Timothy Agoglia Carey was the ur-Nicolas Cage. You want over-the-top performances from a hammy, big-eyed hulking ectomorph? That’s Carey’s entire career. How many actors can you think of that have what you would call a personal vision? Timothy Carey worked on a lot of terrible movies but never compromised that vision, whether he was working with auteurs …