Based on the eponymous book by Valery Osipov, Letter Never Sent centers on three geologists and their guide, sent into the Siberian tundra to find diamonds that would be a huge help in growing the Soviet economy. All involved are…
Beginning in 1989, theater director Andre Gregory and actor Wallace Shawn undertook a unique theatrical experiment: gathering together a group of actors, they started performing Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in and around New York City, in any available space they could…
French filmmaker Chris Marker is a unique talent. His views are unlike any of his contemporaries. He rarely appears in public or gives interviews; Marker wants his ponderings on time, perception, and memory to stand on their own. Don’t spend…
Tired of working on the family wheat farm, and facing a life of financial hardship, Miguel Romero (Miguel Mateo), travels to Barcelona in search of a new life. Given his limited skills, Miguel finds it impossible to find work. Wandering…
Having recently watched Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter, I was eager to see Branded to Kill, the 1967 film that led to his dismissal from Nikkatsu studios. A black and white film noir, at the time, Branded to Kill represented a…
During the 1960’s, Japan’s Nikkatsu Studios hired Seijin Suzuki to make a series of crime melodramas that were to play on the bottom-half of double features. Because these where low budget films, shot in a month’s time, Nikkatsu gave the…
I’ve long pondered exactly what “the Lubitsch touch” was. I’ve enjoyed many of his most political satires (Ninotchka, To Be or Not to Be), and been amused by others (Heaven Can Wait, That Uncertain Feeling) In The Cinema of Ernst…
On the face of it, a movie which takes place almost entirely in one room, consists of 12 men who do nothing but talk—and don’t even have names—should be anything but a searing experience. 1957’s 12 Angry Men an undisputed…
The most openly erotic of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films, Identification of a Woman stars Tomas Milian as Niccolò, a film director who is at the end of his rope both personally and professionally. Dabbling with the idea of making a film…
Given time, nearly every generation gets a film made about them. Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused is for the survivors of the 1970s: that group of Americans who came of age when bellbottoms, love beads, mantras, and marijuana were in…