Blogcritics Author: Dan Schneider

DVD Review: Damnation

Dan Schneider — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:05:43 EST

A masterpiece of emotional misdirection from Bela Tarr.
Bela Tarr became the most well known Hungarian director of films with the 1987 release of Damnation (Kárhozat). And it’s no wonder. While not an inarguably great film, it is certainly close, and a good case for its greatness can be made. More cogently, the film showed Tarr as a filmmaker who is singular, despite some manifest parallels...

DVD Review: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold

Dan Schneider — Thu, 6 Nov 2008 21:13:47 EST

A good thriller that also is a great character study, whose main character is marvelously played by a nonpareil Richard Burton.
The Criterion Collection’s latest release is the 1965 black and white spy classic, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, directed by Martin Ritt, whose best known films include the Woody Allen blacklist film, The Front, and the Sally Field union drama, Norma Rae. Like those, this is a very well directed and taut film. And, like those later...

An Appreciation Of The Songwriting And Music Of John Arthur Martinez

Dan Schneider — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 07:50:45 EDT

An under appreciated musical artist gets a bit of due.
Recently, my wife and I spent a night at a local resort called the Canyon Of The Eagles, northwest of Burnet, Texas. As it was a week before Halloween, things were decked out in orange and black, and faux spider webs abounded. On out first evening there, after we returned from eating in Burnet, at about 7:45 pm, we saw that there was to be a...

Movie Review: W.

Dan Schneider — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:25:43 EDT

Oliver Stone's latest Presidential biopic fails to live up to its predecessors.
Oliver Stone’s latest film, W., a seeming semi-satire on only the first term of President George W. Bush (no Hurricane Katrina, no BS on "the Surge has worked," no economic disaster), is a hit and miss affair which, given Stone’s track record in film this decade, is possibly a slight improvement on those earlier films. Recall...

DVD Review: Missing

Dan Schneider — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:51:21 EDT

Solid thriller that had potential to be great.
The 1982 political film, Missing, by Costa-Gavras (his first American production), is soon to be released on DVD by The Criterion Collection. It’s a good film, but not a great one. This is mostly because it lacks any real poetry, the way Ingmar Bergman’s anti-war film, Shame, has. Yes, it’s well plotted, well acted, well directed,...

Movie Review: Flash Of Genius

Dan Schneider — Thu, 9 Oct 2008 21:21:00 EDT

A film that chooses the easy way out, but could have been much more.
The new film, Flash Of Genius, by first time director Marc Abraham, is one of those films that is well made, well acted, and well shot; technically, there is little to argue with. But, it’s still utterly predictable; as predictable as the sports film that features an underdog you just know will win in the end. As with most films that...

DVD Review: La Jetee/Sans Soleil

Dan Schneider — Fri, 3 Oct 2008 09:20:39 EDT

Two film classics from Chris Marker show that avant-garde is not simply French for pretentious garbage.
Over the years, I had heard of the name Chris Marker, as an avante-garde filmmaker, but having sat through many lost hours, in my early twenties, watching Warhol Factory films and their dread knockoffs, one can understand why I was never particularly moved to engage the films of this man; especially considering that he was French, from that nation...

DVD Review: Aparajito

Dan Schneider — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:38:25 EDT

Satyajit Ray's follow-up to Pather Panchali falls short, but is still excellent.
The first film of Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy, Pather Panchali, was such a great film that, naturally, the second film in the series was bound to suffer a bit of a letdown. Thus, Aparajito (The Unvanquished), based on the novel Aparajita, by Bibhutibhushan Banerjee, is not the unadulterated great piece of art that Pather Panchali is. Like...

DVD Review: An Autumn Afternoon

Dan Schneider — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:21:16 EDT

Another classic from Japanese film master, Yasujiro Ozu.
Goddamn, Yasuhjiro Ozu’s great. Thus my first thought whilst taking in the last few moments of the Japanese film master’s last completed film, 1962’s An Autumn Afternoon (Sanma No Aj -- which, according to online sources, translates as The Taste Of Mackerel -- a feeling Ozu reputedly wanted to evoke with this film). Yes, many...

Book Review: The Conscience Of A Liberal by Paul Krugman

Dan Schneider — Thu, 4 Sep 2008 16:28:41 EDT

The New York Times' columnist doesn't quite slide all the way home with his latest book.
In reading Paul Krugman’s 2007 book, The Conscience Of A Liberal, I wanted to be able to speak of his writing style, as much as of his opinions, politically and economically. This is because I simply get tired of books being criticized simply for their arguments and not how they are presented. In the last year or so, as example, I got two...