Blogcritics Author: Dan Schneider

DVD Review: Mysterious Skin

Dan Schneider — Tue, 6 Jan 2009 17:51:22 EST

A good film that could have been great had its director reined in his own worst tendencies.
In watching the 2004 drama, Mysterious Skin, by filmmaker Gregg Araki, I was reminded of the old gilding the lily nostrum, in that a little bit less would have been a whole lot more, qualitatively, for this film. This is a very good film that certainly had the potential to be great, but its excesses knock it a notch or two below, just enough that...

Book Review: The Philosopher And The Wolf - Lessons in Love, Death, and Happiness by Mark Rowlands

Dan Schneider — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:41:29 EST

A masterful evocation and definition of existence from a philosopher on the rise.
Philosopher Mark Rowlands is not what one would classically think of as a great writer, in that his prose is not supernally poetic like Loren Eiseley’s, he does not use easily understood but well-targeted metaphors like Stephen Jay Gould, nor does he have the raw power that Friedrich Nietszche did. But he manages to convey highly nuanced and...

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...