The year was 1948. World War II had just closed, and the difficult job of cleaning up Germany was in progress. Over the rubble, the Allied powers collaborated, clashed, and ultimately sliced Germany into bits. This is the backdrop of a very strange film noir named Berlin Express. Berlin Express was …
Documentary filmmaker Les Blank passed away last Sunday at age 77. He was perhaps best known for his association with a crazy German named Werner Herzog. Personally, my favorite Les Blank piece is Burden of Dreams, which captured the grueling four-year ordeal that was the production of Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. The …
When I say the phrase, “It’s a women-in-prison movie,” my guess is that your first impression is pretty far from what Caged actually is. The trope of a women-in-prison movie was well-worn in the exploitation era, which means it brings to mind things like scandalously torn clothing, shower scenes, and …
I can credit my intense love of movies to two people: my mom and Roger Ebert. I used to watch Sneak Previous and At the Movies religiously, and I’d make note of the movies I was too young to see, but would undoubtedly seek out when I was older. Mom is …
Recently, a new movie sensation has been making the rounds in the z-grade movie fan community. This movie showed up on Netflix a few weeks ago, and a few of my friends have talked about nearly nothing else since. My friend Aric even started a new blog entirely dedicated to this movie. This …
This morning’s Twitter discussion about the censorship in Holy Motors was capped by this exchange. I love my friends.
My friend Cole ecstatically tweeted this morning that Holy Motors has just hit Netflix Streaming. About 10 seconds later, he posted far less ecstatically that the Netflix Streaming version of the film has been censored. There are few times when Twitter has brought me from higher highs to lower lows …
Every year, I attend B-Fest in Chicago, a 24-hour film festival dedicated to the appreciation of B-movies. While there, I hang around with a crowd who hold a micro-budget film director named Cory McAbee in very high regard. I’ve been told to watch The American Astronaut dozens of times. Because I’m …
It was inevitable. Even though the story looked like a retread of a dozen tried-and-true tropes, the film took Europe by storm. It was the most successful film in Germany for the year of 2012. It became the second most successful film ever in France. And France submitted it to …
A few weeks ago, Fes and I were about to watch a completely different movie when a trailer played for The Perfect Host. Neither of us had heard of the film before, but the trailer caught our attention. The plot seemed to involve a bank thief who cons his way …
