Email Author Michael Atkinson

2000 Stories by Michael Atkinson

• Fables and Fibs

  published December 26, 2000

  Taking its place as the Raise the Red Lantern of the new, manifold Korean film outbreak, Im Kwon Taek's Chunhyang is poised on the... More >>

• Mensch Warmers

  published December 19, 2000

  Another midlife-crisis seizure courtesy of the spawning tribe of teary-eyed, silk-suited daddies who occupy the hills of Santa Monica, Brett... More >>

• Frost Bites

  published December 12, 2000

  However seductive the pulp-cinematic mechanics of mountain-climbing misadventures might be, it's a genre that really has only one destination... More >>

• In the Company of Everymen

  published December 5, 2000

  Spring Forward exemplifies what American indies—so often pie-eyed with genre hypercoolness, egomania, and fatuous ambition—should... More >>

• Dutch Ado

  published November 28, 2000

  Complain though we might about access to international cinema, contemporary New York filmgoing can afford an awesome opportunity to participate in... More >>

• Past Action Heroes; Insane Clone Posses

  published November 21, 2000

  Refreshingly, novelist William Boyd's The Trench doesn't gang-press WW I, virtually forgotten apocalypse that it was, into genre service or... More >>

• Know How You Feel

  published November 7, 2000

  As Thomas Dolby used to cry, Science! Books and TV shows exploring scientific issues and processes proliferate on all levels, but movies... More >>

• Pagan Energies Make Crazy Babies

  published November 7, 2000

  The farther we get from it, the clearer it seems that the Age of the Waves—the '60s and '70s, roughly demarcated—was film culture's... More >>

• Fake It So Real

  published October 31, 2000

  Après Blair Witch le déluge. It's possible that no film has ever been ranted about and speculated upon within a year... More >>

• Couples Therapy

  published October 31, 2000

  That John Berry's adaptation of Athol Fugard's apartheid melodrama Boesman & Lena was graced with an indulgent slot in the latest New York... More >>

• Furtive Desires and Faustian Bargains

  published October 24, 2000

  Anything can happen when actors direct—from Robert Montgomery's sojourns into subjective weirdness to Robert Redford's flatulent... More >>

• Weather Forecasts

  published October 17, 2000

  The sophomore edition of this underheralded film fest proves that just because we're commonly unable to hear the falling tree of new Russian... More >>

• Pub Crawl

  published October 17, 2000

  Being damned by faint praise is the lot of most releasable ultra-indies, and Walter Foote's The Tavern is particularly... More >>

• Luis Buñuel’s Fetish-Object Lessons

  published October 10, 2000

  Openly, serenely delighted with how our own dreams can appall us, and how close movies are to that appalling dreaminess, Luis Buñuel may... More >>

• Prague Spring

  published October 10, 2000

  If BAM's miniseries of out-of-the-gate national work is any measure, Czech cinema is still worshiping and homaging its 35-year-old co-Slovakian... More >>

• Dose of Reality

  published October 3, 2000

  Out of breath, dizzy with migraine frustration, and shuddering with an undeniable energy, Darren Aronofsky's torpedo-shot through Hubert Selby... More >>

• How Do I Deal

  published September 26, 2000

  Josh Evans's The Price of Air starts out temptingly: Shot on digital video, the movie doesn't tell its story so much as toss it in the air... More >>

• Traction Figures

  published September 19, 2000

  Something like the soapbox derby car of superhero comedies, Craig Mazin's The Specials skirts the edge of professionalism, one-upping... More >>

• House of Paint

  published September 12, 2000

  Sharing more nowadays with Ken Russell than with his own, Franco-era filmmaking self, Carlos Saura seems to be turning into a middle-class... More >>

• Paths of Most Resistance

  published September 5, 2000

  Cursed with a résumé free of sensational style and thematic homogeneity, Bertrand Tavernier may be among movie culture's consummate... More >>

• Mope Operas

  published August 29, 2000

  After years of strip-mining headlines, the Hollywood action movie appears to be running red-alert low on raw materials. In Christian Duguay's... More >>

• Missionary Positions

  published August 22, 2000

  Just the kind of rectal self-massage that only pop icons habitually allow themselves—albeit of a kinder, gentler nature, given Phish's... More >>

• Smashing Time

  published August 15, 2000

  Having had thick, sloppy slugs of condescending bunk shot at us all summer long in Gatling-gun-like hails, we should never neglect the option to... More >>

• Season of the Kitsch

  published August 15, 2000

  Curated by Ocularis and held at the "urban beach" as if to reconstitute the golden age of the American teenager—monster movies, make-out... More >>

• Three Sheets in the Wind

  published August 8, 2000

  Clearly Jerry Bruckheimer thinks it is, but is this the inevitable moment for a Flashdance redux, a shake-your-money-maker urban Cinderella... More >>