Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017)

Often good acting is equated to external tics and Denzel Washington’s performance in Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017) is a barrage of choices. The glasses, the fro, the gap in his teeth, the bow-legged walk, and so on. There are a lot of choices to create this character but I thought they were deeply felt […]

The Blackout (1997)

Continuing my deep dive into the back catalogue of Abel Ferrara, The Blackout (1997) is a film of two halves, which combine to form a portrait of addiction. The opening sets up a hedonistic LA lifestyle with movie star Matty (Matthew Modine) returning home from a film shoot, ready to reunite with his girlfriend Annie […]

Killer Of Sheep (1977)

Thanks to Revelation Film Festival’s online version of their annual film festival, Couched, which ran this year in July, they included a Black Lives Matter section that included two films by Black American filmmaker Charles Burnett. Killer Of Sheep (1977), Burnett’s thesis film at UCLA, was something I’d long wanted to see due to its […]

The Late Show (1977)

Not to be confused with either David Letterman or The D-Generation, The Late Show (1977) is another entry in the seventies era’s love of film noir. Produced by Robert Altman, director-writer Robert Benton goes for a different take rather than Altman’s own deconstructive The Long Goodbye. There’s more of a classic witty vibe of detective […]

The Long Goodbye (1973)

American cinema in the 1970s had an interest in reviving older genres, and film noir was a great way of expressing society’s disillusionment and paranoia. Casting the hangdog, bemused charm of Elliott Gould as the classic detective character of Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye (1973) must have seemed like a joke to fans of […]