In August, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced it would be bestowing an honorary award upon Jean-Luc Godard. On the surface this makes perfect sense: more than anyone else, Godard is responsible for the French New Wave movement, one of the 20th century’s most enduring artistic movements — in film or Read More
Despite evidence pointing to his complete non-existence Jean-Luc Godard is in fact still alive, his extremely brief interview with The Australian proves. What’s more, the legend of cinema is actually aware that he will be awarded an honorary Oscar.
On Aug. 26, the Academy assigned flacks to the impossible task of convincing the notoriously private filmmaker to Read More
Jean-Luc Godard—French New Wave pioneer and filmmaker nonpareil—is set to be among those receiving an honorary Oscar this year, but chances are he would not like to thank the Academy. This can’t be much of a shock: the man whose unstoppable brand of cinema was fêted at Film Forum earlier this summer is known to be a bit Read More
The Godard series at Film Forum continues on May 5 with Le Petit Soldat (1960), starring Anna Karina and Michel Subor, at 7:30 and 9:40; the presentation will include the short Charlotte et son Jules (1958). On May 6 and 7, Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1966), with Marina Vlady, plays at Read More
Also recommended, this time for people nostalgic for the hippie disorders and fractured politics of 1968, Jean-Luc Godard’s eerily prophetic and spectacularly stylized avant-garde dialectic La Chinoise (1967) with Jean-Pierre Léaud, Anne Wiazemsky, Michael Semeniako, Juliet Berto and Lex de Bruijn (as Sergei Kirilov). The infinite variety of dissent and revisionism around the world is Read More
The suggestion that there are some filmmakers we have to work to appreciate often implies that moviegoers should be prepared to suffer for the sake of art. We accept that there are writers who require perseverance, perhaps because we associate reading with learning, but we want to pretend that movies, which we grow up watching, Read More
Woody Allen’s Match Point, from his own screenplay, was reportedly well received in Cannes earlier this year, especially (and not surprisingly) by the French critics. It was less well received by the British critics in London, where the movie was filmed. I have experienced mixed reactions from colleagues and acquaintances that have seen it either Read More
Mike Nichols’ Closer, from a screenplay by Patrick Marber and based on his play, transposes the theatrical version’s two British female leads, Natasha Richardson and Anna Friel, to onscreen Yanks Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman. This somehow diminishes the ethnic intensity of the four-scorpions-in-a-jar plot involving criss-crossing coupling in a London still swinging as feverishly Read More
Michael Caton-Jones’ City by the Sea , from a screenplay by Ken Hixon, based on the article “Mark of a Murderer” by Michael McAlary, reminds us how realistically nuanced a Robert De Niro performance can be when he is not more lucratively engaged in the shameless self-caricature of Analyze This (1999) and Analyze That , Read More
From time to time, I will try to do justice to movies that
have come and gone without being adequately appreciated. Mike Figgis’ Timecode
has been floating around the preview circuits for the past few months, and most
of what I heard about it was unfavorable. It’s been described by its promoters
as “part of Read More
