Fear of the Velvet Curtain
EAT THAT QUESTION: FRANK ZAPPA IN HIS OWN WORDS
Eat That Question: Frank Zappa In His Own Words takes its title from a song found on the composer’s 1972 fusion album…
Articles by Dennis Cozzalio
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH: IN MEMORY OF THE BIJOU (1957) AND THE ALGER (1940-2015)
The delightful British comedy The Smallest Show on Earth headlines a great Saturday matinee offering from the UCLA Film and Television Archive…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
O.J: MADE IN AMERICA
In one of those strange confluences of life, death and documentary art, last week the world lost Muhammad Ali, humanitarian, devout Muslim…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
MARQUEE MOVIE: MATINEE
“We used to go to the movies. Now we want the movies to come to us, on our televisions, tablets and phones,…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
The Outfit
John Flynn‘s The Outfit (1974), a brutally efficient bit of business based glancingly on Richard Stark’s procedurally inquisitive and poetic crime novel of the…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
HUDSON HAWK at 25
If there is a reliable truism that can coexist alongside the American film industry’s dance of death with economically insane budgets that…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
PEEKABOO! THE MOVIES OF 2016 AT HALFTIME
Nearing the halfway mark of the movie year and teetering, as we all are, on the edge of another summer movie abyss…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
TEN THINGS I LEARNED AT THE 2016 TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL
Well, another year spent in the company of classic cinema curated by the TCM Classic Film Festival has come and gone, leaving…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
STARING DOWN THE 2016 TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL
I live in Los Angeles, and my residency here means that a lot of great film programming– revival screenings, advance looks at…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
The Huntsman: Winter’s War
I don’t know if The Huntsman: Winter’s War, the big, loud (except when its twin villainesses get all whispery with evil portent) prequel/sequel…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
PEE-WEE’S BIG HOLIDAY
A lot of water, legal and otherwise, has passed under the bridge since Paul Reubens last donned the signature crisply tailored gray…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
WONDER WOMEN OF THE MOVIES: THE 2016 ARTEMIS WOMEN IN ACTION FILM FESTIVAL
Just a quick head-up: For those of you in the Los Angeles area, next weekend, April 22-24, marks the occasion for the…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952)
The icon-establishing performances Marilyn Monroe gave in Howard Hawks’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959)…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
SECRET MOVIES: THEODORE ROSZAK’S FLICKER
Seeing Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat (1934) again recently, my appetite was whetted to re-read Theodore Roszak’s Flicker, which uses Ulmer’s…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
KARLOFF ENTERS! THE BLACK CAT (1934)
By 1934 Boris Karloff was certainly no stranger to great movie entrances. In 1931, under the direction of James Whale, he seared…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
GREAT DOUBLE FEATURES I’VE SEEN #1: SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT (1977) AND CONVOY (1978)
(This is the first in an occasional series in which I remember some of the best double features I’ve been lucky enough…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
MURIELS ROUNDUP
Spotlight more or less ran the table at the Independent Spirit Awards last Saturday night in Santa Monica, picking up honors for…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
MY LAST-MINUTE OSCAR PREDICTIONS
It’s been such a good year at the movies that I’m a little bit surprised by the degree to which I’m approaching…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
THE STRANGE CASE OF BILLY WILDER’S BUDDY BUDDY
Billy Wilder’s Buddy Buddy (1981) might be one of the most obvious go-to examples in the annals of conventional wisdom when it…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
OSCAR’S YEAR OF VISUAL EFFECTS, and THE ART OF SEEING AND BELIEVING
If you have been living and routinely interacting with other human beings over the last month, you’ve probably heard one or two…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
A 2015 SLIFR MOVIE TREEHOUSE DIGEST
The SLIFR Movie Treehouse (the acronym stands in for the title of my blog, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule) is…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
NO FEAR: THE YEAR’S BEST MOVIES
This is definitely the time of year when film critic types (I’m sure you know who I mean) spend an inordinate amount…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
THE HATEFUL EIGHT
(This is a review of the roadshow version of The Hateful Eight, which will be screening in true 70MM in about 50…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
WERNER HERZOG: A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED
Of the Big Three new wavers of German cinema—Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders– who “came of age” as it…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
HAVE YOURSELF A MOVIE LITTLE CHRISTMAS: KRAMPUS AND MORE!
Despite its rampaging monster approach to the holiday season and the imposing, sort-of terrifying giant horned goat-man who provides its title, Krampus…
Fear of the Velvet Curtain
THE MYSTERIOUS CHORDS OF YOUTH
Paolo Sorrentino makes movies the way musicians create music—lingering themes swirl together with short spurts of philosophical flirtation and bawdy jokes, placid…