“Lang’s film becomes a committed act of social justice advocacy, raging against its enforced limitation, and striving to break the formal apparatus that could often be employed to constrain Classic Hollywood cinema.”
“In ‘Human Desire,’ the train tracks carry its hero into the sunny paradise of the American Dream, not the depths of noir’s endless night.”
“Mortensen uses his body to display his characters’ essential tensions, as they ride the line between truth and lies, loyalty and betrayal, chaos and control.”
“The real strength of ‘Inferno’ is the dominant sense of terror that Argento creates through his mastery of physical space (shaded by bright reds and blues, contrastive images of grandeur and decay in the production design)…”
“Behind the mask, lurking within the timbre of the vocal choices, buried beneath the shaped physique, there is truth.”
“It’s not the edge of the knife — it’s the business end of the blade.”
“The vomit moment in ‘Dead Bang’ is unfailingly human.”