1994’s Serial Mom marked something of a turning point for writer-director John Waters. A filmmaker who built his name and reputation on such outre, low-budget fare as Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble, Waters found unexpected mainstream admittance with his 1988 musical/dance comedy Hairspray, a…
1975 was a pivotal year for actress Delphine Seyrig. In addition to work with the radical feminist collective Les Insoumises, alongside director Carole Roussopoulos, she departed from working with popular auteurs of the day, like Buñuel and Resnais, to instead release a trio of…
After releasing notorious flop/secret success Exorcist II: The Heretic in 1977, director John Boorman turned to an attempt at producing a Lord of the Rings film. When that failed to coalesce — sadly, as it was allegedly floated that the Beatles would play the…
Under the guise of complacent nothingness, the characters of Philippe Garrel’s Regular Lovers manage to paradoxically enact and participate in sundry relationships, death drives, drug habits, clashes with authority, and everything in between. The events of May ‘68 sit at the center of the…
When I was 22, my best friend and I lived together for a while in the apartment where I grew up. We were a twenty-minute walk from the subway’s last stop, in a neighborhood that was years away from any semblance of trendiness. My…
Released in March of 1981, Michael Mann’s Thief is one of the great debut feature films, a fully-formed work that shows a young(ish) director firmly in command of the themes and aesthetic proclivities that would reverberate throughout a now almost 50-year career. Having found…
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, summer of 1973. A kid yells from the fire escape outside a brownstone window to his friends on the street below. A swooping crane shot glides from him down to the street, then captures a montage of bodies and objects in constant…
Permanently installed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art since 1969, Marcel Duchamp’s Etant donnes: 1. La chute d’eau, 2. Le gaz d’eclairage (Given : 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas) was the great artist’s final gift to the world, a work constructed in total…
Jacques Rivette works with actors like a child plays with dolls. His films are so lengthy because he often rewrites as his actors play out their scenes, allowing his mysteries to backtrack, rewind, and test new paths, creating a new, fluid narrative blueprint. Céline…
There are certain iconic questions in cinema history that have endured long after the credits roll. Who shot first, Han or Greedo? Did the spinning top ever fall at the end of Inception? In 1989, director Rob Reiner and screenwriter Nora Ephron introduced their…
