Author: Peter Schilling

  • Love Tore Him Apart

    Control is now playing at the Uptown Theatre. There is a wonderful moment the amazing bio-pic Control where Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division, walks to work from his parents home in suburban Manchester. He has a job at a government employment agency, trying to help people get on their feet. As he trudges…

  • Help!

    “So these are the famous Beatles,” says one of the manyBritish stiff-upper-lip types in Help!, their second go-round with director RichardLester. This ’65 effort concerns the Fab Four on the run from pug-faced LeoMcKern, who is a kind of Indian spiritual leader with a Cockney accent, eagerto get Ringo’s holy mood ring. Watching Help! makes…

  • Pickup on South Street

    In Sam Fuller‘s 1953 paean to the New York City underworld,pickpocket Skip McCoy (the great Richard Widmark) accidentally nabs the wrongwallet-one containing microfilm that the Commies are hungry to get theirmitts on. Soon the cops, the feds, and the Reds are all out to get Skip and histreasure. In Pickup on South Street, the director…

  • Lake of Fire

    Seventeen years in the making, Lake of Fire, the epic abortion documentary by Tony Kaye (best known for American History X),has finally arrived. Mercifully shot in silvery 35mm black and white(thus making its horribly graphic imagery that much less disturbing), Lake of Fireeschews narration to rely on 152 minutes of talking heads, protests,and, of course,…

  • American Gangster

    Between the Coens’ new shoot-’em-up and American Gangster, this year’s Oscar contenders will probably be slam-bang pieces of entertainment. In Gangster, Denzel Washington plays African-American mob boss Frank Lucas,who ruled ’70s Harlem by making his product—heroin—better and cheaperthan his rivals’, while simultaneously becoming one of the city’s greatcivic leaders. Opposing him is one Russell Crowe,an…

  • The Many Faces of Bob

    Check out the new trailer for the kaleidoscopic Bob Dylan biopic, I’m Not There. The film stars Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Marcus Carl Franklin, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, and Ben Whishaw as Bob in the various stages of his career.