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Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men
By J.D. Lafrance The 1970s was a fertile time for challenging, politically charged movies. Thanks to Easy Rider (1969) a lot of riskier material was getting made by the major Hollywood studios and, in...
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BRIAN DE PALMA’S ‘CARRIE’ and JEAN-PIERRE MELVILLE’S ‘LES ENFANTS...
© 2017 by James Clark The paths to Surrealist love and decadence are many and varied. Although the phenomena were incubated in Paris, the long-standing kinship between France and the USA in...
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My Favorite 50 Albums of 2016 (part 1)
Given that 2016 was such a turbulent year, it’s no surprise that any sampling of the years standout records would produce a rather noisy, loud affair. Political content often mixed with the chaos,...
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My Favorite 50 Albums of 2016 (Part 2)
With yesterday’s post, I started the countdown of my favorite 50 records from last year, with today seeing the conclusion of the final 25. Looking over the two days, I’m amazed at the fact that very...
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Hair Raising Oscar telecast and Get Out on Monday Morning Diary (February 27)
by Sam Juliano Well, well, well. So in the end those who bashed the Academy for the likely choice of “La La Land” for Best Picture can now take all their shameful conspiracy theories and inane...
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Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables
By J.D. Lafrance Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987) is a film that asks the burning question: is police brutality ever justified? It is when you’re dealing with the likes of Al Capone and Frank...
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4 Million Page Views for Wonders in the Dark!
Allan Fish and I launched our arts site WONDERS IN THE DARK in September of 2008, and today after eight years and six months we have passed FOUR MILLION page views!!! I am so proud of this remarkable...
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My Life as a Zucchini and Logan on Monday Morning Diary (March 6)
by Sam Juliano This past week as announced on the previous post Wonders in the Dark passed the four million level on page views after eight and a half years in existence. This is a great honor for...
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Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye
by J.D. Lafrance “I felt that the film was almost an essay, an education, to the audience, to say, ‘Stop looking at everything exactly the same way.’” – Robert Altman When The Long Goodbye was...
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DAMIEN CHAZELLE’S ‘WHIPLASH’: “You’ve got plenty of options…”
© 2017 by James Clark The young but extremely formidable filmmaker, Damien Chazelle, merits, I believe, special attention for his bringing to the fore in virtuoso style the question of art...
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Raw and King Kong: Skull Island on Monday Morning Diary (March 13)
Most of the critics loved “Raw” but not my brood and I, that’s for sure. by Sam Juliano A blockbuster mid March nor’easter is nearing the New York City/northern New Jersey region, and practically all...
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Norman Jewison’s In Country
by J.D. Lafrance In the 1980s, I was obsessed with the Vietnam War. My gateway drug, as it was for a lot of people I suspect, was Platoon (1986). After seeing Oliver Stone’s film, I wanted more...
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Chuck Berry, Song to Song and Beauty and the Beast on Monday Morning Diary...
by Sam Juliano The rock critic Robert Christgau considers Berry “the greatest of the rock and rollers”, while John Lennon said, “if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it...
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John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China
By J.D. Lafrance “What I’d like to do today is get your version of what happened,” says a mild-mannered, middle-aged attorney (Jerry Hardin). “Oh? You mean the truth,” replies a rather small, aging...
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MICHAEL MANN’S ‘PUBLIC ENEMIES’“What do you want?/”Everything, right now!”
© 2017 by James Clark The many films of Michael Mann seem to be all of a piece in exuberantly delivering that cinematic Midas Touch of “action adventure.” Hardly a subscriber to settling...
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Frantz, Personal Shopper and Brooklyn Book Launch Party on Monday Morning...
Screen cap from Francois Ozon’s hauntingly beautiful “Frantz” by Sam Juliano I certainly got my Chuck Berry fix this past week both in the house and in the car. The Great Twenty Eight compilation...
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Steve McQueen’s Le Mans
By J.D. Lafrance If Michael Mann were to ever direct a racing car film it would probably resemble Le Mans (1971), a passion project for its star Steve McQueen, himself an avid racing car enthusiast....
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Rock n’ Roll 101
by Jamie With the recent passing of Chuck Berry I had a loose idea in my head. As I read piece after piece on his importance to the rock n’ roll form, I wondered what would be the records selected to...
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Life, The Blackcoat’s Daughter and The Zookeeper’s Wife on Monday Morning...
by Sam Juliano April Showers brings May Flowers. It is an innocuous enough adage but for those of us with seasonal allergies it usually heralds in a period of nagging discomfort, allegre pills and...
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Victor Nunez’s Ruby in Paradise
By J.D. Lafrance No other filmmaker other than Charles Burnett, John Sayles or Mike Leigh excels at telling stories about real people like Victor Nunez. He has been called the working man’s auteur and...
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