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MOVIES

John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) – Review by Sean Mercer [Cinemonkey]

The essence of Halloween is a burst of violence on the part of an insane, though clever, man who is “unstoppable,” ubiquitous, and virtually inhuman. He is set against a small group of young women who remain ignorant of his existence, are powerless to stop him when he does attack, and seem to merit his fury due to the licentious and vain orientation of their actions and thoughts.

The Sting (1973) – Review by Pauline Kael

The Sting, with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, strings together the chapters of a Saturday-afternoon serial, each with its own cliffhanger, and we’re invited to wait around to see what the happy twosome will do next. The happy twosome seem to have something for each other, and for most of the rest of the world, that I don’t tune in to.

Sleeper (1973) – Review by Pauline Kael

Woody Allen appears before us as the battered adolescent, scarred forever, a little too nice and much too threatened to allow himself to be aggressive. He has the city-wise effrontery of a shrimp who began by using language to protect himself and then discovered that language has a life of its own.

Papillon (1973) – Review by Pauline Kael

Papillon is a strange mixture of grimness and propriety. There are unnecessary brutalities involving characters we hardly know , and at the same time the movie absolutely refuses the audience any comic relief.

Shining (1980) – di Enrico Ghezzi [Il Castoro Cinema]

Vedere, rivedere, stravedere. Sarà possibile inventare uno «stravedere» come possibile ulteriore significato di «to overlook». In ogni caso, Shining è un film da vedere rivedere stravedere, portando la «stravisione» oltre l’intransitività dello «stravedere (per – qualcuno o qualcosa – )». Ed è un film che stravede il cinema e nel cinema, il futuro negli anni ’80.

Fed Up (2014)

Fed Up (2014) – Transcript

Revealing a 30-year campaign by the food industry, aided by the U.S. government, to mislead and confuse the American public, resulting in one of the largest health epidemics in history.

Gilles Deleuze: The cinema of the brain

Give me a brain – The cinema of the brain and the question of death (Kubrick, Resnais) – The two fundamental changes from the cerebral point of view – The black or white screen, irrational cuts and relinkings – Fourth aspect of experimental cinema

Kubrick and His Discontents – by Hans Feldmann

Since the recognized success of Dr. Strangelove, objections to Kubrick’s obscurity, his enigmatic mind, his bleak view of man, his simplistic view of life, his boring mannerisms abound in the reviews of his films. Barry Lyndon seems destined to encourage the same ambivalent critical reaction.

Pier Paolo Pasolini: Accattone – Saggio di Serafino Murri

Pasolini nel girare Accattone, metteva le mani in una ferita aperta nella pseudo-coscienza borghese, quella dell’esistenza di due Italie, una ufficiale, l’Italia da esportazione, onesta, né povera né ricca ma allegra e sincera, e un’Italia miserrima, in cui tutto, dalla lingua ai codici morali, era fermo ad un passato mai risolto di carognesca vitalità senza scampo.

Serpico: The Hero as Freak – Review by Pauline Kael

What could be a more appropriate subject for a 1973 movie than the ordeal of Frank Serpico, the New York City policeman who became a pariah in the Department because he wouldn’t take bribes? Serpico, whose incorruptibility alienates him from his fellow-officers and turns him into a messianic hippie freak, is a perfect modern-movie hero.

Post-classical fantasy cinema: The Lord of the Rings

A film like The Lord of the Rings is a starting place as much as an end product of adaptation: just one reference point in a matrix of intertextual relations created by synergic cross-promotion. Video games, graphic and literary novelizations, CD soundtracks, multiple Director’s Cuts and DVD versions, prequels, sequels, and franchises not only extend the boundaries of contemporary Hollywood fantasy films but also increasingly determine their form and narrative.

Pier Paolo Pasolini: Il mio Accattone in Tv dopo il genocidio

Accattone può essere visto anche, in laboratorio, come il prelievo di un modo di vita, cioè di una cultura. Se visto così, può essere un fenomeno interessante per un ricercatore, ma è un fenomeno tragico per chi ne è direttamente interessato: per esempio per me, che ne sono l’autore.

Bonnie and Clyde (1967): Gangsters on the Road to Nowhere – Review by Richard Gilman

Bonnie and Clyde is about violence and crime, and the desire of the ego to define itself, to live in violence and crime if it can’t in anything else. To this end it remains properly sympathetic to the characters it has plucked from history, the sympathy being given not to crime but to a process in which crime figures, to the action by which the ego displays itself as the embattled source of everything—crime, love, violence, goodness, error, dream.

Movie Trial: A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

The movies that split people down the middle, put in the Empire dock… Simon Ingram (Prosecution) and Kat Brown (Defence) on Steven Speilberg’s “A. I.: Artificial Intelligence”

The Servant (1963) – Review by Andrew Sarris

The Servant is a genuinely shocking experience for audiences with the imagination to understand the dimensions of the shock. In years to come The Servant may be cited as a prophetic work making the decline and fall of our last cherished illusions about ourselves and our alleged civilization.

2001: A Space Odyssey – Review by John Simon [The New Leader]

2001: A Space Odyssey is fascinating when it concentrates on apes or machines, and dreadful when it deals with the in-betweens: humans. For all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, this is a kind of space-Spartacus and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story.

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