By Christopher Barnes 9/10/12 11:33am

movies

Christopher Barnes (far right) reports from Venice.

Postcards From Abroad: Oldest International Film Festival Stays Afloat in Venice

It has been 18 years since I was last associated with a Hollywood movie—I had a very minor credit on Pumpkinhead II, starring the amazingly talented presidential brother Roger Clinton as “The Mayor”—and this week, at the Venice Film Festival, felt like a walk back in time. In addition to covering the festival for The Observer, I was there to see off my small investment in an independent movie called Kiss of the Damned, which was closing the festival.

Venice is like a smaller Cannes: lots of premieres, stars and glamour, but without the large scale-madness of its French counterpart. Medium-sized commercial movies play alongside smaller, niche pictures. Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, Robert Redford’s The Company you Keep and Brian De Palma’s The Passion all premiered, as did a retrospective of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate.

My only criticism of the Venice Film Festival is that it’s hard to motivate oneself to go to these movies during the day, when you have a combination of perfect weather, one of the world’s most beautiful cities and whatever residual bleariness from covering all those late-night parties. Read More

By Christopher Rosen 4/09/09 11:35am

Single Person’s Movie: Scarface

It’s 2 a.m. and you awake with a jerk, alone in your fully lit apartment and still on the couch. On TV, the credits of some movie you’ve already seen a billion times are scrolling by. It feels like rock bottom. And we know, because we’re just like you: single.

Need a movie to keep Read More

By Andrew Sarris 11/13/07 6:22pm

De Palma Goes Dark (Again)

REDACTED
Running Time 90 minutes
Written and directed by Brian De Palma
Starring Kel O’Neill, Ty Jones, Mike Figueroa

Brian De Palma’s Redacted, from his own screenplay, deals with an American military rape atrocity much like his 1989 Casualties of War, a reenactment of a true story, from a screenplay by Read More

By Gillian Reagan 11/13/07 5:26pm

Man of War

When Brian De Palma hears that his new movie Redacted, which opens today, will make some viewers feel like they’ve been punched in the stomach, he seems happy about it. “Maybe because they’re finally seeing the truth, something they’ve been guarded from so often,” he explained over the phone..

Mr. De Palma has never Read More

By David Foxley 10/08/07 4:20pm

Just How ‘Indie’ Is The New York Film Festival?

Late last night in the front room of O’Neals Restaurant at West 64th Street and Broadway, director Ira Sachs was explaining the importance of the New York Film Festival.

“A commitment to cinema—over a long period of time—as an art form,” the 42-year-old director said, was the hallmark of the festival, which for the first Read More

By Charles Taylor 5/15/06 12:00am

De Palma’s Masterpiece: A Casualty of the Box Office

It would be nice to think that with the release of the new extended cut of Casualties of War, Brian De Palma’s masterpiece and one of the greatest of all American movies, would finally get its due. In 1989, America didn’t want to see another Vietnam movie. Now, mired in Iraq, viewers may see the Read More

By Andrew Sarris 8/17/98 12:00am

Cage Rolls the Dice, Playing Another Flawed Hero

Brian De Palma’s Snake Eyes , from a screenplay by David Koepp, based on a story by Mr. De Palma and Mr. Koepp, begins with an eye-opening Steadicam shot that goes on for 20 minutes with a single take through a jampacked Atlantic City arena (actually the old Montreal Forum), the site of a fixed Read More