Email Author Amy Taubin

2001 Stories by Amy Taubin

• Shape-Shifting Creature Features

  published April 17, 2001

  Larry Fessenden's Wendigo is a monster movie more sad than scary. It debuted at Slamdance in January, received a rave review from... More >>

• Hysterical Displacement Activities

  published April 10, 2001

  In Bridget Jones’s Diary, Renée Zellweger’s breasts are as plump and white as pillows in a baby’s crib. The breasts,... More >>

• Middling Hybrids and Horrible Men

  published April 3, 2001

  Like fusion cuisine, the budding genre of fusion movies relies heavily on presentation. A period piece set in Beijing at the beginning of the 20th... More >>

• Naked Lunch

  published March 27, 2001

  About seven years ago, the now 80-year-old Tobias Schneebaum was persuaded by novice brother-sister filmmakers David and Laurie Gwen Shapiro to... More >>

• Have Weaponry, Will Travel

  published March 20, 2001

  Departing under duress, Berlin Film Festival director Moritz de Hadeln chose for his final opening night a film guaranteed to offend his mostly... More >>

• All the Girls of Their Age

  published March 13, 2001

  Unless you're a cop or a hit man, movies seldom give more than a wink and a nod to your line of employment. TV adds doctors, lawyers, and... More >>

• Scavengers Uncover a Mother Lode

  published March 6, 2001

  A side-door entrance into the French character and economy, Agnès Varda's eccentric and thoroughly winning The Gleaners and I is... More >>

• The Devolution will be Televised

  published February 27, 2001

  The script for Daniel Minahan's Series 7, a dead-on shot to the heart of reality TV, predated Survivor by several years; in fact, it... More >>

• Witness Program

  published February 27, 2001

  Given that the competition at the Berlin Film Festival is mostly filled with Hollywood megaflicks and undigestible Euro-puddings, viewers tend to... More >>

• Rites of Passage

  published February 20, 2001

  The hero of Kate Davis's Southern Comfort is Robert Eads, a Georgia farmer with a craggy face, a scruffy beard, and an old-school... More >>

• On the Map

  published February 13, 2001

  A fine-boned, soft-voiced woman of 38, who looks 10 years younger, the Turkish filmmaker Yesim Ustaoglu joins the ranks of the most promising... More >>

• Amazed and Confused at Sundance

  published February 6, 2001

  Contrary to rumors, American independent film is not dead, although if most distributors had their way, it would be. As one astonishing film after... More >>

• Blind Ambition

  published January 23, 2001

  "I'm making a film. I'm taking it to Sundance, and I know it's going to win. How hard can it be? Everyone's doing it these days." When John Viener... More >>

• As Tears Go By

  published January 23, 2001

  The films of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai are as voluptuous as they are elusive. Wong made six films between 1988 and 1997, but the three that... More >>

• Miscarried Justice; Jejune Miscreants

  published January 16, 2001

  In the ongoing saga of race and American injustice, there are few episodes as horrifying as that of the "Scottsboro boys." Barak Goodman and... More >>

• Mopey Dicks and Boogie Nights

  published January 9, 2001

  Guaranteed to provoke Lacanian scholars and porn connoisseurs (not always distinct categories), the documentary Wadd: The Life and Times of... More >>

• Surface Tension

  published January 2, 2001

  Owsley Brown's documentary Night Waltz: The Music of Paul Bowles is a lovely, rather eccentric tribute to the great American writer who... More >>