John Patterson

PITY POOR CLAUDE CHABROL, THE UNJUSTLY NEGLECTED FIGURE OF the French Nouvelle Vague. Somewhere along the line, for a variety of reasons, some understandable, some demented, Chabrol's reputation has floundered. And this despite the fact that with more than 50 movies under his belt, he's the most prolific of his......

At this moment, in this sparse, soulless Beverly Hills hotel suite, and onscreen in his latest movie, director Mike Leigh seems to have stepped totally outside the contexts in which we‘re used to finding him. Having grown up watching his early films on the BBC in 1970s Britain, where he......

photo by Keith Hamshere For the evergreen, ever-dependable biennial Bond movie experience, the song remains very much the same; it’s just that everything else has changed out of all recognition. As per the recipe, we get a slam-bang pre-credit action sequence — in this case a splendid office-trashing four-handed fist-......

Charlie Kaufman, screenwriter of Spike Jonze‘s big-screen debut, the mesmerizing, dreamlike Being John Malkovich, warns me up-front that he doesn’t give good interview. “This may end up being a real bust for you, and I apologize in advance,” he says as we take our seats at Fred 62, Los Feliz‘s......

David Lynch’s new movie, The Straight Story, is nearly over before we see any evidence -- in this case, a television set -- that it takes place in the modern world. The 73-year-old Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) has traveled from Iowa to Wisconsin on a souped-up backyard mower to visit......

EVEN THE TITLES SEEM DRUNK ON their own grandeur: Magnificent Obsession. Written on the Wind. The Tarnished Angels. Imitation of Life. Movies can't possibly live up to such intoxicating names. Unless they're directed by the great Danish-German exile Douglas Sirk. These four have been restored to their original splendor and......

WITH HUGH GRANT ATTEMPTING A COMEBACK WITH his mobster comedy Mickey Blue Eyes and Pierce Brosnan floating around the frame like his own ghost in The Thomas Crown Affair, I'm prompted to ask (as a British man), what do you see in this pair? Is it class? It must be,......

Photo by Eric LiebowitzTHE SCARIEST SEVEN WORDS IN THE English language are these: "What I really wanna do is direct." When you hear them, start running and never stop. Decoded, they mean: "What I really wanna do is dreck." The phrase is redolent of counter-jumping thespians not fit to be......

Photo by Sebastien RaymondJAMES WHALE AND TOD BROWNING would have loved Twin Falls Idaho. The first film from twin writer-directors Michael and Mark Polish features no bolted necks, no Living Torsos or Human Chickens, no torchlit processions of vengeful peasants, but it is nonetheless essentially a monster movie, albeit one......

Photo by Michael TackettFROM THE FIRST FRAME OF MARK PELLINGTON'S Arlington Road, the suburban landscape is a zone of palpable dread. We see lawns, driveways, mailboxes, station wagons. But the camera isn't gliding serenely through space as it's wont to do in suburban-centered movies as different from each other as,......