Tagged: history

david bax / movies / reviews / Theatrical Review

June 23, 2022

A New Old Play: Years of a Clown, by David Bax

Qiu Jiongjiong’s A New Old Play has, at times, the feel of an old silent picture. To be clear, it’s actually a quite verbose film but perhaps it gives that particular impression because of the use of thoughtfully crafted title cards. These...

david bax / movies / reviews / Theatrical Review

April 28, 2022

The Wobblies: There Is Power in a Union, by David Bax

The Wobblies, Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer’s 1979 documentary about the heyday of the Industrial Workers of the World union (recently restored in 4K and set to screen all over the country for International Workers Day), makes no attempt to...

david bax / movies / reviews / Theatrical Review

December 24, 2021

The Tragedy of Macbeth: Passion Play, by David Bax

For twenty years, Joel Coen was the only credited director on what we had already been calling “Coen brothers films” before Ethan’s contribution was made official with 2004’s The Ladykillers. Now, for the first time, it’s actually true. The Tragedy...

david bax / movies / reviews / Theatrical Review

November 18, 2021

The First Wave: Hero Worship, by David Bax

Matthew Heineman’s The First Wave has a title with a very specific meaning; it refers to the first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. But that might not be obvious to someone who hasn’t yet seen...

david bax / movies / reviews / Theatrical Review

November 6, 2021

Six Films by Miklos Jancso: Once Upon a Time in Hungary, by David Bax

Six films by Miklós Jancsó have recently been restored by Kino Lorber and are currently playing in a retrospective series at the American Cinematheque at the Los Feliz 3. That’s six more Jancsó films that I had seen before last...

david bax / movies / reviews / Theatrical Review

September 16, 2021

Wife of a Spy: Only Forever, by David Bax

Before I get started here, I want to preemptively clarify that Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Wife of a Spy is not a movie about moviemaking. It feints in that direction early on, as we see Satoko (Yū Aoi), the wife of the...

david bax / movies / reviews / Theatrical Review

July 13, 2021

Casanova, Last Love: Charmless, by David Bax

Benoît Jacquot makes a lot of movies. His newest, Casanova, Last Love, is the fourth I’m reviewing for this site in the last ten years and that doesn’t even represent half of his output in that time. Given his prolificity...

david bax / movies / reviews / Theatrical Review

February 19, 2021

Sin: Rocky Road, by David Bax

In ways both good and bad, Andrey Konchalovskiy’s Sin isn’t strictly a biopic of Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo (played here by Alberto Testone). Like most good biographical films, it doesn’t try to cram too much of the man’s life into...

david bax / movies / reviews / Theatrical Review

February 9, 2021

The Reckoning: Plague to the Cheap Seats, by David Bax

During the recent, virtual Sundance Film Festival, there premiered a surprising number of movies that, despite having been conceived of and largely produced before the COVID-19 pandemic, had eerie similarities to what our lives have become. Add to that list...

2021 / david bax / movies / reviews / sundance / sundance 2021 / Theatrical Review

February 3, 2021

Sundance 2021: Judas and the Black Messiah, by David Bax

After nearly a year of video-on-demand premieres–and coming almost at the end of an entirely virtual film festival–the larger-than-life, widescreen photography (by Sean Bobbitt) and the abundant close-ups in Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah made me long for...

Tagged: history

A New Old Play: Years of a Clown, by David Bax

The Wobblies: There Is Power in a Union, by David Bax

The Tragedy of Macbeth: Passion Play, by David Bax

The First Wave: Hero Worship, by David Bax

Six Films by Miklos Jancso: Once Upon a Time in Hungary, by David Bax

Wife of a Spy: Only Forever, by David Bax

Casanova, Last Love: Charmless, by David Bax

Sin: Rocky Road, by David Bax

The Reckoning: Plague to the Cheap Seats, by David Bax

Sundance 2021: Judas and the Black Messiah, by David Bax

SUBSCRIBE

ADVERTISEMENTS

Recent Theatrical Reviews

Recent Home Video Reviews

COMMENTARIES

PREMIUM EPISODES