Film
Good Times Today, Stupor Tomorrow
By David N. MeyerThreatening to throw someone off a yet to-be-completed skyscraper in a British gangster movie is to indulge in British noir neoclassicism at its finest. Like everything else in Britain, Brit noir has traditions to be observed, touchstones to be honored.
Docs In Sight
Filial Documentaries
By Williams ColeAt a film market a few years ago, I once heard a prominent documentary sales agent say to a crowd of eager filmmakers that “nobody cares about films about your family. Please don’t make them.”
Sophistication, Perversity & Technicolor
By David N. MeyerThere’s little point in citing all the different genres, plots, or wildly varying locations of Michael Powell’s films. His subject matter—whether B/W depictions of WWII pilots or bomb disposal experts or the sweetest adult love story you’ll ever see, or saturated 3-strip Technicolor depictions of Arabian Nights fairy tales, nuns in the Himalayas, English comic characters come to life, ballerinas casting love and life aside for art, or a serial killer murdering with a movie camera—actually remains constant.
