Author: Peter Schilling

  • Cloverfield

    It looks like producer J. J. Abrams (the man behind Lost and Alias) took a few cues from legendary horror-meister Val Lewton. In Cloverfield, Abrams’s Godzilla-like monster wreaks havoc on New York City—except he does so at night, and we can’t see a damn thing except shadows and fleeting images of the beast as things…

  • Las Momias de Guanajuato

    This is arguably the greatest lucha libre horror film in history. Yes, friends, we know that’s like saying Evan Almighty is the greatest congressional ark-building comedy ever, but this entertaining schlock—starring those masked Mexican wrasslers—cost a hundredth as much, and looks to be ten times more amusing. In Las Momias de Guanajuato (1972), the wrestler/sorcerer…

  • There Will Be Blood

    The latest from director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) is rumored to be a frontrunner for the best-picture Oscar, but that’s highly unlikely. There Will Be Blood is magnificent, epic, and utterly bizarre; films this weird never win the big one. Based loosely on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!, There Will Be Blood features…

  • Strike Anywhere

    Not content as one of the world’s foremost cartoonists (don’t call her a graphic novelist—she loathes that designation), Marjane Satrapi has now made the leap into directing movies, starting with an animated adaptation of her highly acclaimed Persepolis. This modestly budgeted film is a brilliant hybrid of black-and-white and color, fable and memoir, at turns…

  • Behold the Bull

      The Pedro Infante film festival at the Parkway Theater. Beginning November 16 and running through the 29th. Who is Pedro Infante and why should we care? Why should we brave cold November nights and wander through the city streets to an old theater and watch these Mexican melodramas? For the same old reason we…

  • The Cat Who Outlived Christ

    “Baby” is thirty-seven years old. This is the claim of one Al Palusky, of Duluth, who considers the black, long-haired cat to be his best friend. This is not news to Al’s wife Mary. “When we were married Al’s priest told him that he couldn’t call Baby his best friend anymore,” she said. Al just…