Burt and Harold have been accused of murder. Not in the legal sense, mind you, with arrests and affidavits, attorneys and judges, but in the old-fashioned way of finger-pointing and yelling louder than everyone else. You see, Burt Berendsen (Christian … Continue reading AMSTERDAM
The Irishman begins in darkness. A small box of light at the center of the frame opens like an iris, and we see nurses and doctors. It looks like a hospital, but this is no beginning; this is the end: A … Continue reading THE IRISHMAN
As the saying goes, hindsight is twenty-twenty. Why death hung so darkly over my mind as I penned last year’s Best Of column, I cannot say. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was the movies. Maybe it was the Rolling … Continue reading 2019: Something To Do With Death
Cinematographer Michael Chapman died on Sept. 20, 2020. He was 84. We hadn’t heard or seen much of Chapman recently (his last credit was Bridge to Terabithia in 2007), but Chapman was king in the 1970s and ’80s. Chapman’s first credit as … Continue reading TAXI DRIVER
Movies echo movies. Sometimes in the minds of the filmmakers: Conversations in sound and image across time and space. Sometimes in the viewer’s minds: Stories ping-ponging their way through a couple of thousand years of recorded history. More often than … Continue reading AMERICAN BOY: A PROFILE OF STEVEN PRINCE
As the coronavirus pandemic approaches its projected peak, the need to stay indoors takes on a renewed urgency. But, for a good many, self-isolation is less than a luxury. Escape is needed, and there are fewer art forms that offer … Continue reading On Familiar Ground: Paul Schrader and the Death Impulse
Who is Frank talking to? That was the question posed as a group of us exited The Irishman. One was a film programmer, the other four: film professors—the fixating kind. But the question was valid. Who is Frank Sheeran (Robert De … Continue reading THE IRISHMAN
“I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man.” —Notes From the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky Who makes the monster, and where do they come from? We’ve been asking those questions for far too long … Continue reading JOKER
When it comes to sports on film, none transfer to a composed and contained visual medium quite like boxing. Two men, and in some cases women, square off in a confined arena below the spotlights of showtime. The action is … Continue reading HANDS OF STONE
Michael J. Cinema 
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