Writings
 from St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books

On the new Nagisa Oshima box, plus the doc Waiting for Armageddon, IFC.com, 5/25/10

The Messenger, and German gray-porn Cloud 9, IFC.com, 5/18/10

Romero's The Dark Half, The L Magazine, 5/18/10

Christian Nemescu's California Dreamin', and Coppola's Tetro, IFC.com, 5/14/10

The index to my daily DVD-&-home-viewing columns for Movieline.com, starting 4/27/10 and ongoing...

"The Calm After the Storm: Making Sense of Lebanon's Civil War," by way of Lebanese movies, that is, The Village Voice, 5/4/10

"Castle of Protest: The Provocations of Joao Cesar Monteiro,"Moving Image Source, 5/3/10

"Pale Fire: The Movie Stardom of Michael Caine," Moving Image Source, 4/28/10

"Remember to Forget: Memento," Moving Image Source, 4/11/10

My Criterion essay on Godard's Vivre sa Vie, at The Criterion Collection, 4/22/10

On Bahman Ghobadi, The Village Voice, 4/14/10

Pontecorvo's Kapo, pace Serge Daney and Jacques Rivette, IFC.com, 4/13/10

On "the newspaper picture" and how movies learned to talk like Americans, at The L Magazine, 4/6/10

Juiced up by The Baader Meinhof Complex, with love left over for I Sell the Dead, IFC.com, 3/30/10

Blog tour stop #3: the greatest crime of the 20th century and The Great Zapruder Film Hoax, at The Rap Sheet, 3/26/10

On Kiarostami's Close-Up, The Village Voice, 3/24/10

Taxidermia! -- plus, Park Chan-wook's masterful Vengeance Trilogy in a new DVD box, IFC.com, 3/23/10

Capsuling Kimjongilia, The Village Voice, 3/18/10

The Beaches of Agnes, and the Uruguayan indie Gigante, IFC.com, 3/16/10

On Kurosawa's Ran, LA Weekly, 3/10/10

The odd thing that is Gentlemen Broncos, plus 1967's Rocky Road to Dublin, IFC.com, 3/9/10

Blog Tour stop #2: My case for being a "history fiction" puryevor and a "nostalgist," at bookbitchblog, 3/3/10

The Pleasure of Being Robbed, plus the Criterionization of Ophuls's Lola Montes, IFC.com, 3/2/10

Steve McQueen's HUNGER!, IFC.com, 2/23/10

Ranting on media vacuity vis a vis Tiger Woods's johnson, at True/Slant, 2/20/10

My Criterion Top Ten, The Criterion Collection, 2/17/10

The first Holocaust movie ever -- shot in Auschwitz in 1947! -- Wanda Jakubowska's The Last Stage, IFC.com, 2/16/10

Noh Young-seok’s Korean micro-indie Daytime Drinking, plus a cataract of femme noir, from 1951's Two of a Kind to Hugo Haas's One Girl's Confession (1953), IFC.com, 2/9/10

Vintage Czech cinema in L.A., including Marketa Lazarova!, LA Weekly, 2/8/10

On Solidarnosc-era Polish cinema, The Village Voice, 2/3/10

Looking at Wholphin 10, and W.S. Van Dyke's long-underseen White Shadows in the South Seas, IFC.com, 2/2/10

Summing up the death of Miramax at The Village Voice, 1/30/10

Reviewing Eastwood's Invictus, Sight & Sound, 1/29/10

On the sublime Canadian deconstructionist horror beaut Pontypool, plus Ulrich Seidl's Import/Export, IFC.com, 1/26/10

The Dardennes' Lorna's Silence, and Craig Baldwin's Mock Up on Mu, IFC.com, 1/19/10

Considering Roy Andersson's magnificent You, the Living, plus Duncan Jones's Moon, at IFC.com, 1/12/10

Why I won't see Avatar, True/Slant, 1/7/10

(500) Days of Summer, plus the rampaging Soviet serial Miss Mend, IFC.com, 1/5/10

A one-man, one-room remake of First Blood, Flooding with Love for the Kid, in The Village Voice, 1/5/10

On Lucretia Martel's The Headless Woman, and the new disc of animations by Alexander Alexeieff, IFC.com, 12/29/09

On Chaplin's The Great Dictator, in The Village Voice, 12/23/09

My song of love for Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, IFC.com, 12/15/09

Reviewing the Coens' A Serious Man in Sight & Sound, Dec. '09

I actually went to see Glenn Beck's one-night-only live theater-cast of The Christmas Sweater, The L Magazine, 12/10/09

Patricio Guzman's epochal The Battle of Chile finally on DVD, IFC.com, 12/8/09

Riffing on The Omega Man, The L Magazine, 12/2/09

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Three Monkeys, and philosophe-doc The Ister, at IFC.com, 12/1/09   

Reviewing The Road and Me and Orson Welles, at IFC.com, 11/25/09

Luis Bunuel's never-noticed Death in the Garden, and the newly Criterionized Downhill Racer -- at IFC.com, 11/24/09

Park Chan-wook's Thirst, and Kent MacKenzie's The Exiles, IFC.com, 11/17/09

Flabbergast-ment at Herzog's The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, and at Alexander Sokurov's The Sun, IFC.com, 11/1/09

Reviewing Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Scott McGehee and David Siegel's Uncertainty, at IFC.com, 11/11/09

Lance Hammer's best-film-of-2008 Ballast, and amid a new noir box the treasure of Don Siegel's 1958 humdinger The Lineup, IFC.com, 11/10/09

Of the new Samuel Fuller set featuring Shockproof and It Happened in Hollywood and more, plus a thought about the Atkinson-essayed Criterion release of Wings of Desire, IFC.com, 11/3/09

Blog tour stop #1: How I learned to write being a total academic scofflaw, at Lesa's Book Critiques, 11/5/09

Late-breaking reviewing: The Men Who Stare at Goats, and the apocalyptic doc Collapse, at IFC.com, 11/3/09

My supplement essay to Wim Wenders's legendary Wings of Desire, at The Criterion Collection, 11/3/09 and forever.

Euro-horror: the French chiller anthology Fear(s) in the Dark, and Italian politics in Il Divo, IFC.com, 10/27/09 

On Hans-Jurgen Syberberg's Ludwig and Karl May, plus the 1936 proto-zombie Karloff flick The Walking Dead, IFC.com, 10/20/09

At True/Slant, I sit dumbfounded as Glenn Beck cries over old TV commercials... 10/17/09

On Dusan Makavejev's first three Yugo-nosethumbings, plus Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie, IFC.com, 10/13/09

My rueful tell-all essay-memoir about the making of my dead TV pilot Babylon Fields, at Lost Magazine, 9/09 

Anvil! The Story of Anvil, and the Danish anti-porn anime Princess, IFC.com, 10/6/09

My story at Significant Objects, where I attach fictional significance to an iron pipe stand, and sell it (and its new context) on eBay! 10/6/09

At True/Slant, my summary judgment of the Polanski affair -- take that! 10/5/09...

On the notorious and agonizing NY indie Frownland, plus the 1950 Mexican pulp howl Aventurera, IFC.com, 9/30/09

More at True/Slant, on fear of neocon churchers and the distribution problems of the Darwin biopic Creation, 9/24/09

Sally Potter's cell-phone pioneer indie Rage, and the hyperreal Kazakh comedy Tulpan, at IFC.com, 9/21/09

My debut, introductory column -- dipping my toe into the toxic ocean of cultural-political blogo-chaos -- at True/Slant, 9/23/09!

Peter Greenaway's crazy-historical comeback diptych Nightwatching and Rembrandt's J'Accuse, plus Rene Clement's long-ignored Zola adaptation Gervaise, IFC.com, 9/15/09

Carlos Reygadas's Silent Light, and Kobayashi's marathon ordeal-drama The Human Condition, IFC.com, 9/8/09

Silent Soviet agit-pulp: Lev Kuleshov's The Death Ray, The L Magazine, 9/8/09

Looking at Jonas Mekas's massive, rare avant-garde diary portrait of the '60s, Walden, plus Trouble the Water, IFC.com, 8/31/09

Chantal Akerman's epochal iron-maiden epic Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, and Andrzej Wajda's Katyn, IFC.com, 8/25/09

On John Cassavetes's Husbands, plus the Azerbaijanian farce-fantasy Absurdistan, IFC.com, 8/18/09

On the spellbinding film criticism of Graham Greene, Moving Image Source, 8/21/09

Briefly, Elem Klimov's Rasputin-biopic grand mal, Agony, The L Magazine, 8/21/09

On the Brit white-knuckler London to Brighton, and Azazel Jacobs's The GoodTimesKid, IFC.com, 8/4/09

Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The L Magazine, 8/7/09

Powell & Pressburger's The Small Back Room, The L Magazine, 8/7/09

9/11 conspiracy docs, plus the samurai pulp classic Sleepy Eyes of Death, IFC.com, 8/4/09

Polanski's Repulsion, and '60s-football doc Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, IFC.com, 8/4/09

"Vivre sa Vie," The L Magazine, 7/28/09

"Thunder Roads: Gangster Movies in Search of America's Nomad Soul," Sight & Sound, 7/09

On Godard's autobio wasteland Made in U.S.A., and the tweedy Barrymore silent Sherlock Holmes -- at IFC.com, 7/21/09

Amos Gitai's One Day You'll Understand, and the Belgian road comedy Eldorado -- at IFC.com, 7/14/09

"Project X: Revisiting the Season of the Blair Witch," Moving Image Source, 7/17/09

The Carax-Bong-Gondry omnibus Tokyo!, and Chico Teixeira's Alice's House -- IFC.com, 7/7/09

Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad, and Amat Escalante's Los Bastardos, at IFC.com, 6/30/09

Fish Story at the NYAFF, The L Magazine, 6/24/09

On the Chinese heartbreaker In Love We Trust, and Godard's Une Femme Mariee, IFC.com, 6/16/09

On Tarkovsky's Solaris as it's mediated by the fab new Japanese film The Clone Returns Home, at The Criterion Collection, 6/17/09

Summing up Lewis Klahr's Tales of the Forgotten Future, at The L Magazine, 6/3/09

On The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Tarkovsky's Voyage in Time, IFC.com, 5/19/09

Quick pitch for Alexei German Sr.'s My Friend Ivan Lapshin, L Magazine, 5/19/09

"Endless Summer: Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day," at Moving Image Source, 5/18/09

Azazel Jacobs's Momma's Man, and Terence Davies's Of Time and the City, IFC.com, 5/12/09

On Wendy & Lucy, and Chris Marker's A Grin without a Cat, IFC.com, 5/5/09

"Time Regained: Remembering Julien Duvivier," Moving Image Source, 5/4/09

"Ironweed," TCM.com, 4/12/09

William Wellman's pre-Code films (especially Other Men's Women and Wild Boys of the Road), plus The Believer's album of Godardabilia, JLG in USA, at IFC.com, 3/31/09

Revisiting Guy Maddin's Careful, TCM.com, 3/09

Hiroshi Shimizu and Ornamental Hairpin, and Visconti's L'Innocente, IFC.com, 3/17/09

On Zizek and The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, and Charlie Kaufman and Synecdoche, New York, IFC.com, 3/10/09

"The Bright Side of Genocide: the New Holocaust Movies," In These Times, 3/9/09

A glimpse of my piece on the aesthetic of Polish movie posters (w/ illustrated gatefold!), in The Believer, 3/09

"Ashes of Time: On the death of VHS," Moving Image Source, 2/26/09

Godfrey Cheshire's Moving Midway, and, inexplicably, The Midnight Meat Train, IFC.com, 2/24/09

On Luis Bunuel and Simon of the Desert, IFC.com, 2/10/09

"Waltz with Bashir," In These Times, 2/12/09

On William Friedkin, retro'd at the Harvard Film Archives, Boston Phoenix, 2/11/09

On Carol Reed's Our Man in Havana, IFC.com, 2/3/09

"Ferrari's Dillinger Is Dead," at BAM, 1/29/09

"Rossellini's The Taking of Power by Louis XIV," IFC.com, 1/20/09

"Che," The Boston Phoenix, 1/13/09

Marco Bellochio's The Wedding Director, and Michael Powell's A Matter of Life and Death, IFC.com, 1/6/09

Hong Sang-soo's Woman on the Beach, and Nina Davenport's Operation Filmmaker, IFC.com, 12/30/08

"The Best Straight-to-DVD Releases of 2008," and #1 is a forgotten Larry Jordan animation!, IFC.com, 12/17/08

On Sam Fuller's White Dog, and Werner Herzog's Ballad of the Little Soldier, IFC.com, 12/16/08

"Silent Light: Frank Borzage at Fox, in the Shadow of Sunrise, and on the Brink of Sound," Moving Image Source, 12/16/08

Assayas's Irma Vep, IFC.com, 12/9/08

On Jia Zhangke's Still Life, and Roberto Rossellini's always-forgotten Era Notte a Roma, IFC.com, 12/2/08

"Children of Paradise: How to Watch Hal Roach's Our Gang Comedies and Why," Moving Image Source, 11/20/08

On the excruciating pulp satires of Minoru Kawasaki, and Keaton's The General, IFC.com, 11/18/08

On the occasion of W., a mad rummage through "Bush-era cinema," in Sight & Sound, Dec. '08

On Budd Boetticher, and Ousmane Sembene's Camp de Thiaroye, IFC.com, 11/11/08

"Ends of the Earth: The 20th Annual Boston Jewish Film Festival," The Boston Phoenix, 11/5/08

"Michael Moore's Slacker Uprising," In These Times, 11/5/08

On Hou's Flight of the Red Balloon, and Mystery Science Theater 3000, IFC.com, 10/28/08

"The Shadow Army: The Thin Red Line Ten Years After," Moving Image Source, 10/28/08

"Paris vu par... (Six in Paris), and Lewis Milestone's Arch of Triumph," IFC.com, 10/21/08

"First Person Plural: Mike Leigh's Search for Happiness," Moving Image Source, 10/17/08

"Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos and Le Deuxieme Souffle," IFC.com, 10/14/08

"Boy A", IFC.com, 10/7/08

Saluting Children's Poetry Laureate Mary Ann Hoberman, at The Poetry Foundation, 10/8/08

"Be My Knife: Sex as Transgression and Transaction in Oshima's Political Erotica," Moving Image Source, 9/30/08

"Mr. Vengeance: The Bill Douglas Trilogy," Moving Image Source, 9/22/08

"Aki Kaurismaki's Proletariat Trilogy," at IFC.com, 9/24/08

"Mon Oncle Antoine," TCM.com, 9/22/08

"Who Needs Critics?" -- an optimistic symposium of critics loving other critics, in Sight & Sound, 9/08

"The Title Above the Name," in which I consider the value of poetry book titles, at The Poetry Foundation, 9/10/08

"Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, IFC.com, 9/2/08

"Kino Pravda" -- Mosfilm and Russian cinema history, in Boston, Boston Phoenix, 8/26/08

"The Man in the Glass Booth," The Forward, 8/18/08

"Hellboy II: The Golden Army," Sight & Sound, 8/08

"On DVD: the films of Larisa Shepitko," IFC.com, 8/12/08

"Hotel Berlin," TCM.com, 9/08

"Dystopian Idol: The Ignored Prophecies of Peter Watkins's Privilege, Moving Image Source, 8/25/08

Dreamy contributions from me plus 49 others to "The Lost World of the Double Bill," Sight & Sound, 8/08

"St. Bill of Illinois: The Poignant Case for William Holden," Moving Image Source, 7/2/08

My Blueberry Nights, IFC.com, 7/2/08

Robert Wiene's The Hands of Orlac, TCM.com, 7/2/08

Pabst's Secrets of a Soul," TCM.com, 7/1/08

Chris Marker and The Last Bolshevik, IFC.com, 6/24/08

"Outskirts of the Kingdom: Werner Herzog," Moving Image Source, 6/4/08

The Delirious Fictions of William Klein, IFC.com, 5/27/08

"A Human Being!: Philip Schultz and Failure," Poetryfoundation.org, 5/24/08

"Darkness Visible: HFA's 'Unseen Noir' retro," Boston Phoenix, 5/19/08

"Errol Morris's Myopia: Standard Operating Procedure," In These Times, 5/13/08

"Todd Haynes's I'm Not There and Abel Gance's La Roue, IFC.com, 5/13/08

"Ray Harryhausen's Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and It Came from Beneath the Sea," The Stranger, 5/08

"Anna Karina and the American Night," The Believer, March-April '08

"Harry Houdini, Movie Star," TCM.com, 4/08

"The New York Underground Film Festival's Last Hurrah," The IFC Blog, 4/4/08

"The Stepford Wives," TCM.com, 4/08

"Moving Targets: The Iraq War on Film," Modern Painters, 4/08

"Ousmane Sembene's Moolaade and Otto Preminger's Daisy Kenyon, IFC.com, 3/25/08

"Sergei Paradjanov on DVD," TCM.com, 3/08

"JewishFilm 2008," The Boston Phoenix, 3/25/08

"Hell Boy: Berlin Alexanderplatz," The Boston Phoenix, 3/18/08

My case for George Melies, at IFC.com, 3/17/08

"Portuguese Man of War: Manoel de Oliveira," The Boston Phoenix, 3/12/08

My latest liner notes for The Criterion Collection: Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey, Jules Dassin's Brute Force, and Shohei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine. Plus: an original video "essay," for Lodge Kerrigan's Clean, Shaven. And for Zeitgeist: Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Brothers Quay

IFC.com, every week

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Content copyright . Michael Atkinson. All rights reserved.