It seems to me Egoyan has often gravitated toward pulp material and trashy genre tropes, mostly because his interests in voyeurism, surveillance and the technologies that enable them are an easy fit for the lurid and perverse plots more typical of certain film genres; or rather, those plots provide a kind of natural…

I wonder if Charlie Siskel, who co-directed, could have been the one to emphasize the link between Maier and Maloof's obsessive behaviors, or the one to choose to avoid it. I remember speaking to Deb Ellis, one of the directors of HOWARD ZINN: YOU CAN'T BE NEUTRAL IN A MOVING TRAIN, who said that to make documentaries…

I will never forget the sheer terror I felt during the scene, near the end, when one of Wrenwood's residents comes to Carol's cabin one night to console her a few seconds after she breaks down crying. I can think of very few scenes in movies when what looks like an an act of kindness is so suffused with dread.

Octavio Getino, one of the two directors of the classic, epic documentary LA HORA DE LOS HORNOS, only made one feature film, EL FAMILIAR, in 1975. It shows a filmmaker of great inventiveness and a willingness to explore the medium's possibilities, which makes EL FAMILIAR feel less like a first, tentative attempt at a…

Harold Pinter made a single feature film: BUTLEY, in 1974, and it is quite good. Based on the play by Simon Gray, Pinter doesn't make the mistake of trying to open the play, instead focusing the action in the protagonist's office. It feels like a film from a director who trusts his material and his actors and only…

Yes! I thought about Limite as well. Such an underseen classic and with a hell of a story behind it. Georges Sadoul called it "an unknown masterpiece." To think it was once almost considered lost.

Fame, stardom and some darker aspects of show business also came up a lot this year. Referenced allegorically in UNDER THE SKIN, stardom is also examined in BIRDMAN and Cannes entries CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA and MAPS TO THE STARS (the latter two will count for next year's recap, but premiered in 2014). Another Cannes…

This is a really fantastic movie that I find more thoughtful and compelling than many of its French extreme horror contemporaries, like MARTYRS and INSIDE. Or perhaps it is a mistake to put them in the same category? It certainly reaches similar levels of revulsion as those two. But I also remember a piece for SIGHT &…

Great film. And I'm glad you brought up RULING CLASS and ROMEO IS BLEEDING. They're both wonderfully savage and strange. Medak's career has been quite interesting. I seem to remember he has a way with the grotesque that feels over-the-top but, when looking at the films, I don't think he abuses off-kilter compositions…

There's another play about Turing, LOVESONG FOR THE ELECTRIC BEAR (2003) by the late Snoo Wilson (who wrote an interestingly strange movie starring Anthony Sher called SHADEY from 19). That one takes a more surrealist approach to telling Turing's life, from childhood to his death. To give you an idea of it, our guide…

Finally watched INTERSTELLAR. Happy to report I greatly enjoyed it, and I can even describe the exact section where the film had me completely enthralled (SPOILERS):

Nice selection. But do you mean THE WELL-DIGGER'S DAUGHTER? If so, I enjoyed it too. I remember it had an extremely sympathetic performance by Daniel Auteuil, who also directed.

Yeah, I can't imagine Jordan is not in on what will happen in his segments, even if there's a level of improvisation in them. I think the more they do these segments they continue to develop their comedic chemistry. Jordan is like the ultimate straight man (and I wonder if I should mean "straight" here in the many…

I think the structural differences between these movies play a great part in terms of how they are remembered. LDV's episodes, if interchangeable in order, also feel more detachable, more easily thought about as discreet scenes than as part of a whole. Can we say the same about L'AVVENTURA? It seems to me L'AVVENTURA…

They should also schedule a Jordan Schlansky special while they're at it.

Something I heard from a theater patron at the box office last weekend: "one for whatever action crap Keanu Reeves is in this week." He probably meant JOHN WICK, but that makes it sound like he is constantly churning out shitty action movies. Perhaps he was thinking of Nicolas Cage?

I can't help but think that the absence of female-driven superhero movies could have been avoided very early on if filmmakers had followed the lead of X2, which is a movie that belongs almost entirely to the ladies. While Wolverine is caught up with his own quest of self-discovery (which he's not very good at),…

Susan Sontag. I would think of her as primarily a cultural critic, but she dabbled in practically everything.

Right. The same was the case with Godard, Rivette, Rohmer, Chabrol… the French New Wave emerged from the pages of Cahiers.

Experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton also had a notable career as an art critic before becoming one of the greatest exponents of structural films. Check out his (NOSTALGIA), POETIC JUSTICE, and ZRONS LEMMA.