Poison Ivy

If you were alive but below the drinking age in the 80's, this one's for you. And if you weren't, this one is still for you. Poison Ivy is the quintessential 80's TV teen movie- a ridiculous, groan-inducing yet ironically fascinating window into what Hollywood believed America represented during the Reagan years: sex, sex, money, …

A Wedding

Robert Altman developed a unique, instantly recognizable style that no one has ever come close to imitating well, with his enormous ensemble casts, consciously sloppy camera work and fly-on-the-wall sound design. Sometimes, that organized chaos ends up in a mess of a film Altman himself can't save, like Prêt-à-Porter, and sometimes it ends up as …

Looking for Mr. Goodbar

Some movies are wonderful. Others are terrible. And then there are those that fall under the category of "fascinating artifacts" - films whose value is primarily historical or cultural. Richard Brooks' Looking for Mr. Goodbar is pretty much that, but what a specimen. Sometimes it's a corny 70's movie with groan-inducing stereotypes: the hard-ass, overbearing …

All That Jazz

I hate musicals. At least, as a general rule, I hate musicals for the obvious reasons that one should- they're silly, trite, melodramatic, offering all fluff and no substance. That mantra held true for a long while until I finally watched Bob Fosse's classic, All That Jazz, which uses the musical form to discuss the …

Chappaqua

"Exterminate all rational thought," commands the great William Burroughs as we enter Naked Lunch- sage advice, since not heeding his warning will leave you frustrated and confused as you wander around his mad, but brilliant world. Conrad Rooks' Chappaqua requires a similar mindset; an exploration of what it's like to go through drug withdrawal, the …

Matewan

John Sayles is arguably America's greatest independent filmmaker, having spent a lifetime navigating the backwards industry known as Hollywood as a ghostwriter in order to finance his own fiercely independent productions. As writer, director, and editor, Sayles' stamp is clear- a deeply humanist and compassionate lens, part Ken Loach without the overt socialism, part Cassavetes …

Velvet Goldmine

Todd Haynes was one of the most exciting filmmakers to emerge in the 90's with indie masterpieces like Safe, Poison, and the infamous, banned Superstar- but as he got older, his obsession with formalist cinema, and mimicking other filmmakers' styles, seemed to take precedence over having something to say, with varying degrees of success (Far …

The Confessions of Robert Crumb

What role does Robert Crumb play in a 21st Century, post-#METOO America? On the surface, the answer is "not much"- his openly misogynistic hostility towards women, his Sambo-influenced depictions of African Americans... it's hard to imagine any self-respecting Millennial making it through a single of comics without going into convulsions. And yet, Crumb is arguably …

I Shot Andy Warhol

The New York City art scene is a perennial source of American Myth that every hipster- no matter what generation they're from- romanticizes at some point in their life. From the Velvet Underground to Basquiat, the amount of books, movies, and music generated that deal with these various icons seems endless- and most of it …

Two Lane Blacktop

Film director Monte Hellman has now passed on to the great beyond, but if you are one of the growing number of people without a dvd player, there's no way for you to enjoy his greatest achievement, Two Lane Blacktop, which only exists as a Criterion Collection DVD. Until now. Two Lane Blacktop is quintessential …