“In Caravaggio and Scorsese’s art, the silent actions of male and female characters speak louder than words. We don’t need to hear Holofernes scream to understand what Judith has taken.”
“Under May’s stare in ‘The Heartbreak Kid,’ and through the provocations of scene partners, Grodin creates a character of rare stature: a horrifying, stone-dumb genius.”
“In my hatred for the Bond franchise, I feel I may have done a disservice to its star. I have always had a tendency to discount Sean Connery as an exquisitely sculpted statue, capable of filling out a tuxedo very nicely but little else.”
“One of the great joys in viewing the films amassed under the World Cinema Project banner is discovering the richness of a nation’s cultural and scenic backdrop.”
“As always, Spike Lee asks all the right questions, and it’s up to us to recognize that even though the answers may not be ones we want to hear, we need to grapple with them all the same.”
“The accumulated effect of ‘Find Me Guilty,’ with its litany of absurdities, is that it is better to deliver the accused from continued subjugation than to maintain faith in a system that has lost all claim to its moral authority.”
Part Three of a Four-Part Disaster Movie Series by Bill Bria
“In their conversations, Soderbergh and Nichols work together to dismantle the artificial dividing line between art and criticism, neatly moving between the two…”
“‘Underground’ remains a controversial and wildly ambitious film, one that refuses to be pinned down. It’s a never-ending hall of mirrors that reveals more about the audience than the narrative itself.”
“‘Yourself and Yours’ is a great summer movie, where the over-lit qualities reflect a state of mind more than an exact reality.”
“Moss is nothing short of phenomenal in ‘Shirley,’ filling out her performance with a steady flow of poisonously perfect wisecracks, putdowns and insults…”
“‘True History of the Kelly Gang’ explodes like a Molotov cocktail, one that is fueled by punk spirit and more androgynous costuming than a New York Dolls album.”
“Cassavetes’ films form a mosaic of artistic fortitude, glued together with thought.”
“Green’s skillful direction is a master class in strategic elision.”
“If the point of criticism is to bring the reader closer to the artwork, then Schrader’s reviews of other films are as important as his own to understanding his perspective.”
“Even though ‘The Psychic’ and ‘The Black Cat’ don’t exist as prominently in the cultural consciousness as ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and ‘Halloween,’ there is a sense that the Final Girls do exist in the wider world of horror…”
“In the end, there can be no simple feelings of joy or satisfaction in seeing Batman defeat the Penguin — in seeing the good guy defeat the bad guy — because who’s the winner here, really?”
Part Two of a Four-Part Disaster Movie Series by Bill Bria
“While ‘Teorema’ and ‘Visitor Q’ share a common DNA, what’s most striking is the way each film uses The Stranger. Both figures bring with them a kind of new order, as if they were missing puzzle pieces for the families that they integrate themselves into.”
“In ‘Night Falls on Manhattan,’ Lumet arrives at acceptance — the system is what it is. He is resigned to his inability to chronicle any meaningful change through his work.”