1976

“Rock and Roll Band,” the rousing, celebratory track that opens side two of the vinyl LP edition of Boston’s 1976 self-titled debut, spins the tale of the band’s supposed origin story, a rather mundane, cliché narrative of “just another band out of Boston” initially…

For more than five decades now, Clint Eastwood’s longevity as both an A-List Hollywood star and director has been nothing short of astonishing. Sure, he’s had his dry periods like anyone in the business, but he’s always managed to rise back up and eventually…

The French New Wave has long been the go-to introductory movement for burgeoning cinephiles. Unlike other, more loosely-defined national “waves,” it has reasonably delineated boundaries, organized around the Cahiers group on the one hand and the Left Bank offshoot on the other. Most importantly,…

In Dario Argento’s Deep Red, the piercing visions of a Jewish-German telepath (Macha Méril) serve as an embodiment of this Italian master’s worldview: to look is to know, and to know is to feel. As in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up before it, a murder (here it’s Méril’s imperilled seer)…

OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service or into some DVD bargain bin assuming that those still exist by the time this sentence finishes. In other words, while the title of In Review…

The 1976 debut album from reggae trio Mighty Diamonds doesn’t usually get lumped in with other roughly contemporary works of Jamaican revolutionary agit-prop, and the reasons why aren’t difficult to comprehend. Burning Spear’s Marcus Garvey, the Abyssinians’ Satta Massagana, and Culture’s Two Sevens Clash all spelled out their apocalyptic intentions — even…

The title, Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, gives away this film’s clinical fascination with the everyday by defining the central character only by where she lives. With about as much narrative as Michael Snow’s Wavelength, director Chantal Akerman creates a static portrait of two…

#8: Kentucky Crapwagon: The Horror Cinema of William Girdler Download episode here. Episode Description: This month, Steve & I, the Click and Clack of DIY movie podcasts, get festive with a Halloween-themed episode dedicated to the horror films of William Girdler. Girdler is the director of such…

Despite its perfectly befitting narrative set-up, and however enjoyable it is to watch, Abbas Kiarostami’s A Suit for Wedding doesn’t entirely live up to its potential. Three working-class apprentices secretly “borrow” an expensive suit from the tailor shop that employs one of the boys. There…

Most of us are loathe to admit it, but the job of a film critic is, more often than not, that of a glorified publicist. The best among us aspire to more—to enlightenment, to intellectual engagement, to the communication of everything this oh-so-young artistic…