FEATURES
BEAU TRAVAIL
By Amy Taubin and Kent Jones
Claire Denis, intrepid explorer of unknown territories, maps the terrain of masculine longing in the French Foreign Legion in Beau Travail. No longer just one of our best woman directors, she’s now one of the best directors in world cinema, period. Two different takes on this issue’s Movie of the Moment.
BURT LANCASTER
By Armond White
Lowest common denominator stardom wasn’t enough for him. One of the great icons of post-war America, Burt Lancaster was that rare thing—a movie star whose charisma, vitality, and power were matched and then some by his intelligence, artistic ambition and integrity.
HALL OF MIRRORS
By Maria Demopoulos
Where does Hollywood come up with the visual pow! of films like Fight Club? Where do Spike Lee and Oliver Stone get all those innovative techniques? Why are movies like Mission: Impossible 2 bombarding us with images faster than a speeding bullet? The state of the art, from the Gap to The Matrix and back again, via MTV.
DJIBRIL DIOP MAMBÉTY
By Robert Sklar
African cinema lost one of its greatest with the death of Djibril Diop Mambéty. In a career that spanned 25 years, yet produced only two feature films, this playful surrealist displayed an anarchic sensibility tempered with unexpected compassion.
ALAIN RESNAIS
By Gregory Solman and Jonathan Rosenbaum
With the one-two punch of Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad, French director Alain Resnais became an art film champion for life. His probing investigations of the vagaries of the human mind and memory over the next 40 years have left viewers baffled but mesmerized.
I’M NOT AFRAID OF LIFE
by Nicole Armour
A close look at a unique film about four teenage girls poised on the brink of womanhood and the intense bonds and emotional states that link them.
MICHAEL ALMEREYDA
by Chris Chang
Vampires, mummies, tornadoes, Sundance in Pixelvision, and now Hamlet? With Ethan Hawke? And Bill Murray? The elusive indie filmmaker Michael Almereyda asked us not to print his picture. So we insisted.
DEPARTMENTS
LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER
OPENING SHOTS
News, Chatterbox, Coming Soon To a Decoder Box Near You, Guilty Pleasures: Mary Harron, Off the Shelf
LETTERS
CRITICS CHOICE
8 critics rate 25 new releases
JOURNAL
Tehran by Alissa Simon
FIRST LOOK
Terence Davies’s The House of Mirth by Jonathan Romney
DISCOVERY
Mike Mills by Mark Olsen
DISTRIBUTOR WANTED
Alex Cox’s Three Businessmen by Jonathan Romney and David Williams’s Thirteen by Robert Horton
FESTIVALS
Berlin by Harlan Kennedy and Richard Pena, New Directors/New Films by Paul Arthur
REVIEW
Time Code by Gregory Solman, The God of Day Had Gone Down Upon Him by Paul Arthur, L’Humanite by Kent Jones, East is East by Graham Fuller, The Filth and the Fury by Howard Hampton, Praise by Adrian Martin, Trixie by John Anderson.
VIDI VIDI VIDI
Experimental Film x5 by Gavin Smith, Castle of Cagliostro by Nicole Armour
FSLC “SEEN”
Who’s who at recent Film Society events
