Wild Reeds/Les Roseaux sauvages. André Téchiné, 1994. **** It Happened One Night. Frank Capra, 1934. **** Recount. Jay Roach, 2008. **** The Long Good Friday. John Mackenzie, 1980. **** Ikiru. Akira Kurosawa, 1952. **** Hamlet 2. Andrew Fleming, 2008. *** Autumn/Automne. Ra’up McGee, 2004. *** Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Jon Hurwitz and [...]
The Week in Moving Pictures
http://jurgenfauth.com/2008/09/01/the-week-in-moving-pictures/
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
It’s no secret that I love Star Wars — and not just “the old ones” but all six movies: their mythic scope, their conceptual and visual inventiveness, the cheesy characters and blunt dialogue, the structural complexity, the joy they take in speed and color. Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the all-new animated Star Wars adventure, [...]
http://jurgenfauth.com/2008/08/11/star-wars-the-clone-wars/
The Free Will
Hard-working German actor Jürgen Vogel plays the serial rapist Theo in Matthias Glasner’s almost unbearably grim The Free Will (Der Freie Wille). When we meet Theo, he’s heavy-set and angry, working at the cafeteria of a seaside youth hostel. Within minutes of the film’s beginning, he spots a potential victim, knocks her off a bicycle [...]
http://jurgenfauth.com/2008/03/08/the-free-will/
Paul Thomas Anderson
“You’ve got a serious artist crush,” Marcy remarked — a statement, not a question — when I sent her a link to a gallery of adorably geeky photographs of Paul Thomas Anderson during the Hard Eight period. Guilty as charged: I’ve been rewatching and reassessing and obsessing over all five of PTA’s films, reevaluating Punch-Drunk [...]
http://jurgenfauth.com/2008/03/07/paul-thomas-anderson/
The Rich Have Their Own Photographers
Ecstatic worshipers in store-front churches, steel workers in their homes, the down-and-out inhabitants of Buffalo’s skid row: social documentary photographer Milton Rogovin was never interested in the well-to-do. Thus, the quote that serves as the title of Ezra Bookstein’s sharp and fully realized portrait of Rogovin, now 98 years old. In the fifties, Rogovin was [...]
http://jurgenfauth.com/2008/02/03/the-rich-have-their-own-photographers/
Konsum: Poodlesitting
Poodle-in-law Bo needed my loving attention and finely honed dog-walking skills last week, so I only saw three new films along with the never-ending (and frequently repeating) slew of half-watched classics that drifted by on suburban cable TV. Expect this ratio to shift dramatically when I hit the Berlinale next week. In Bruges. Martin McDonagh, [...]
http://jurgenfauth.com/2008/02/03/konsum-poodlesitting/








Free Willy
It’s not that I can’t tell a killer whale from a serial rapist — it’s simply that the dumbest puns sometimes amuse most, especially when they offer mild relief for otherwise unbearibly grim tales of doomed love and ill-fated desires. Benten‘s fourth DVD release Der Freie Wille (The Free Will) streeted last week (yes, it’s [...]
http://jurgenfauth.com/2008/06/30/free-willy/