Email Author Michael Atkinson

2005 Stories by Michael Atkinson

• Unsung Comic Genius Gains Recognition

  published September 20, 2005

  Beyond the silent pratfall trinity of Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd, competition was fierce on the supposed second tier of comic auteurs, and a major... More >>

• The Most Expressive Cold War Flick

  published September 20, 2005

  This forgotten, saber-toothed 1962 AIP cheapie might be the most expressive on-the-ground nightmare of the Cold War era, providing a template not... More >>

• Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

  published September 13, 2005

  Violence—what is it good for? Define it, movie-wise, however you want—catharsis, spectacle, vicarious risk, sadistic voyeurism—but... More >>

• Definitive Garbo: Film's Greatest Enchanter Keeps the Title

  published September 13, 2005

  No woman in the history of movies has had nearly as many delirious, beauty-mad, metaphor-clotted canticles written about her as Greta... More >>

• Georgian Master's Films Finally Released

  published September 13, 2005

  The still-underappreciated—and never American-distributed—Georgian master has been living and working in France for almost 30 years, but... More >>

• Death Becomes Her

  published September 6, 2005

  As a Hollywood mogul, Tim Burton has succeeded in molding his devotion to old pulp and antiquated methods into a cooler-than-cool marketing... More >>

• The Weight of History Anchors an Earnest, Elliptical Odyssey

  published September 6, 2005

  Shot length might someday be used as a kind of cultural palmistry: American filmmakers favor unambiguous brevity, but for a certain breed of... More >>

• Cinema Vertigo: Radical Film's Rapturous Secrets Revealed

  published September 6, 2005

  Ten years after its belated U.S. release, it seems as if Mikhail Kalatozov's I Am Cuba (1964) has always been with us, always staking out... More >>

• Everything's Been Understated in Foer Adaptation

  published September 6, 2005

  Utterly unfilmable novels don't scare some people—a would-be Cronenberg after a fashion, actor-turned- Yiddishe-auteur Liev Schreiber... More >>

• 'One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern'

  published September 6, 2005

  Exactly the sort of starry-eyed, bullet-spraying hyperbole that drains credibility from any brand of political discourse, Stephen Vittoria's... More >>

• Close Encounter

  published August 30, 2005

  Most movies, as things that are made, come off as massive, costly, inscrutable technological erections—like cathedrals or suspension... More >>

• The Devil's Rejects: Effective Frights and Brain-Dead Writes

  published August 30, 2005

  Apparently, exorcism horror movies lose a good deal of footing unless they're "based on a true story"—and authentication is hard to come by.... More >>

• Silent Treatment: A Stark, Forgotten Fairy Tale's Fierce Poetry

  published August 30, 2005

  Archivo-obsessives will plotz over this 1918 Famous Players–Lasky adaptation of Maeterlinck, directed by Maurice Tourneur with... More >>

• Resurrecting an Unsung Horror Gem

  published August 30, 2005

  It's 1961, and Brit New Waver Jack Clayton makes a lavishly appointed 20th Century Fox movie version of Henry James's The Turn of the... More >>

• Cold Comfort Pharm

  published August 23, 2005

  Drawing on the John le Carré reservoir guarantees a face-smacking degree of literate sophistication, pander-free dialogue, and ethical... More >>

• Open Season

  published August 23, 2005

  Last year at this time, the film-culture hoi polloi were busy amassing brickbats and storming the castle, hoping against hope that movies could... More >>

• 'New York Korean Film Festival 2005'

  published August 23, 2005

  A thinner, lighter, and more homogenized sampling of Asia's ongoing favorite New Wave than we've grown used to from previous Subway... More >>

• Stardust Memories: Socialist Sci-fi From East Germany

  published August 23, 2005

  If there's anything more beguiling to a true treasure-hunting cinephile than the old films of a lost nation—in this case, East... More >>

• Class Conflict Comedy à la Renoir

  published August 23, 2005

  One of Jean Renoir's earliest features, this 1932 comedy of social disaster seems brutely simple—an unschooled Parisian bum is rescued from a... More >>

• The Shit-Pit of Bourgeoisie Greed

  published August 23, 2005

  "Fin du cinéma"? At the white-hot cresting moment of his epochal first phase, Jean-Luc Godard conjured this yowling, hilarious black... More >>

• Lore Brothers

  published August 16, 2005

  Either you're a schnook for what we can call the Nicholas Meyer Conceit—pace The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, ironically commingling... More >>

• Pole Positions: An Indispensable Kieslowski Collection

  published August 16, 2005

  August or no, here's a candidate for the year's best holiday gift box—six of Kieslowski's earlier features, fashioned before and outside the... More >>

• Hyper-Real, Crass Czech Gusto

  published August 16, 2005

  The Czech New Wave continues to belch up unseen wonders, the latest of which for us is this 1972 Jaromil Jires lament, based on the prison diaries... More >>

• First and Only Soviet Women War Flick

  published August 16, 2005

  This patient, epic piece of late-Soviet propa-drama—nominated for a 1972 foreign-film Oscar and then summarily forgotten—might just be... More >>

• Fraternity Rank: Simpatico Siblings, Shoddy Script

  published August 9, 2005

  John Singleton's Four Brothers begins life with the premise and promise of a realistic post-noir, set in the contemporary Detroit... More >>