SEXY BEAST, WILD BILL, GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS and ALBINO ALLIGATOR tried to do this with mixed success, usually by opening up part of the play to a wider setting.

While I wouldn't go so far as to call it Mann's best, it distills many of the director's stylistic innovations and thematic concerns into a tight package.  It's less of an out and out failure, and more of a case where what the director intended to deliver was at odds with what the audience  expected or wanted.

MIAMI BLUES  is the obvious choice, followed by WILD THINGS and the first half of OUT OF SIGHT, but the fact that the site has covered these films rather extensively as of late suggests that we're in for some obscurities or bad adaptations of Elmore Leonard or Curtis Hiassen books.

All of the scenes between the analyst and his father were Tarkovsky's as well.

Moaning, more like it.

Good comment.  CRUISING seems somewhat revolutionary for the time in portraying homosexuality, for some, as a vehicle for expressing masculinity.  Most films to that point portrayed gay men as lacking or denying their manly impulses and mannerisms.  In Hitchcock, masculinity asserts itself in pathological, often…

I've been torn between deciding whether Friedkin is a cinematic primitive (in the vein of Samuel Fuller), or if he's fucking incompetent.

Of the 70s studio auteurs, Friedkin was probably the most direct in addressing the latent homo-eroticism found in masculine oriented genre films, particularly in CRUISING and TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.  The former's application of Hitchcockian voyeurism to a solely masculine world is particularly powerful, and rather…

MGM finally put it out in 2008.  I don't know if it's still available.

It was an amazing tour.  The grounds and art collections hosts loads of mind blowing kitsch  and the docents were really knowledgeable, although they discreetly avoid taking guests to celebrity burial sites.  A UCLA professor who wrote a book about Forest Lawn even showed up and gave a power point presentation on…

If you haven't seen him do a Q&A, Friedkin rivals Robert Evans as a master of the colorful embellishment, so if you can't see him in person it will be worth it to read the book.  The humility mentioned in this reviews seems somewhat new.

That movie is my personal litmus test as to whether I can appreciate a persons taste in film.  about 7 or 8 years ago I noticed that it was being screened in L.A. on my birthday.  To celebrate I booked a tour at Forest Lawn for my friends and then we did an early dinner and saw the movie.  An acquaintance who was…

As much as I love the gas station scene, I'll be popping THE LOVED ONE in the DVD player tonight in tribute.

Based on what I've heard about TO THE WONDER, If you liked TREE OF LIFE you'll probably get something out of this.  BADLANDS, DAYS OF HEAVEN,  and THE NEW WORLD are better gateways, being a bit less abstract with a more traditional sense of narrative.

And yet, on the commentary track on MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, Scott Eymann, in a characteristic fit of unnecessary editorializing that mars pretty much everything he writes, dismisses Joe McDonald as a mediocre DP. Clementine excepted. Frankly, I think he's among the most underrated.

Fuller in general, as Craig J. Clark notes.  According to Fuller's biography, the name was an homage to a soldier who lost all of his limbs due to wounds incurred during W.W.I .  I've always wondered if the same soldier inspired JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN.

I recall that most of the scenes in this movie were done in long, uninterrupted takes.  McDonald would later shoot several Sam Fuller films for Fox, including HOUSE OF BAMBOO, perhaps the most beautiful Technicolor noir ever made.

I picked up the Criterion box set of BATTLE OF ALGIERS for a buck.

I can go on about how BARRY LYNDON is the ultimate Kubrick film in terms of narrative structure, thematic complexity, and technical command.  The first half is also funny as hell.  But I've had the same problem getting people to watch it, even those who I know will love it.  My guess is that, as a period piece, it…

A revisionist show dealing with the McCarthy era would be fascinating.  Most dramatizations of the McCarthy persecutions tend to make the subjects martyrs, hounded only because of their standing up for their political principles.  In contrast, several films I've seen from the Czech Republic and Hungary depict members…