American Independent Cinema

RESERVOIR DOGS — SHOCKTOBER!

American Independent Cinema, Cannes Film Festival, Capsules Blog, Classic Cinema, Crime Drama, Cult Film, FIVE STARS, Heist Movie, SHOCKTOBER!

October 29, 2023

In 1992 Quentin Tarantino did something that hadn’t been done since 1986 with David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet;” he reinvented cinema.…

BASKETCASE — SHOCKTOBER!

American Independent Cinema, Black Comedy, Capsules Blog, Classic Cinema, Cult Film, FIVE STARS, Horror, Podcast, sex, Sexploitation, SHOCKTOBER!, Transgressive Cinema

October 24, 2023

In episode #25 Mike and I take an old school trip to bad old Manhattan of the ’80s with BASKET…

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD — SHOCKTOBER!

African American Cinema, Agitprop, American Independent Cinema, Black and White, Capsules Blog, Criterion Collection, FIVE STARS, Horror, SHOCKTOBER!, Transgressive Cinema, Women's Cinema

October 8, 2023

In the context of a social revolution boiling around the ongoing war in Viet Nam, George A. Romero made a…

CARNIVAL OF SOULS — SHOCKTOBER!

American Independent Cinema, Black and White, Capsules Blog, FIVE STARS, Horror, SHOCKTOBER!, Women's Cinema

October 6, 2023

The film’s subdued black-and-white photography contributes considerably to its flowing palate of social, physical, and emotional coldness. Even by modern…

SAM PECKINPAH’S BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA — SHOCKTOBER!

American Independent Cinema, Capsules Blog, Corporate Corruption, FIVE STARS, Horror, Neo Western, SHOCKTOBER!, , Women's Cinema

October 5, 2023

Fermented in a conflicted state of tragic romanticism, which is placed firmly in a no-man’s land between liberation and capitalism,…

TRAMPS

American Independent Cinema, Capsules Blog, FIVE STARS, Romantic Comedy, Women's Cinema

March 21, 2022

Winner winner chicken dinner. I’d like my romantic comedy with a suitcase MacGuffin, a side of crime, and a chemistry…

GHOST LIGHT

American Cinema, American Independent Cinema, Capsules Blog, Independent Cinema, Shakespeare, THREE STARS

June 21, 2019

At a time when Hollywood has lost its mojo, low budget indie films such as “Ghost Light” come with simple…

A POEM IS A NAKED PERSON

American Independent Cinema, Biopic, Capsules Blog, cinéma vérité, Documentary, FIVE STARS, Music, Rock 'n' Roll

May 1, 2018

Not only is Leon Russell’s legacy as one of American music’s most vibrant composers and performers maintained here, so too…

THE RETURN OF THE SECAUCUS 7

American Independent Cinema, Capsules Blog, FIVE STARS, Independent, Women's Cinema

June 16, 2017

In 1980, four years before “The Big Chill” addressed baby boomers crossing over into middle age ennui for mainstream (read…

PUTNEY SWOPE — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

Agitprop, American Independent Cinema, Capsules Blog, Classic Cinema, Criterion Collection, FIVE STARS, Podcast, Transgressive Cinema

July 27, 2016

Robert Downey Sr.’s best-known film is a stunning piece of transgressive racial, political, and anti-capitalist satire. Cole Smithey.

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

American Independent Cinema, Capsules Blog, Criterion Collection, FIVE STARS, LGBTQ, Podcast, Queer Cinema

July 5, 2016

Writer/director Gus Van Sant adds an essential chapter to the New Queer Cinema movement of the early ‘90s that witnessed…

THE HUMAN TORNADO – CLASSIC FILM PICK

African American Cinema, American Independent Cinema, Blaxploitation, Capsules Blog, Classic Cinema, FIVE STARS, Independent Cinema, Video Essay

November 16, 2012

Rudy Ray Moore’s signature style of guerilla blaxploitation filmmaking is as defiant, ribald, and outrageously funny as anything in the…

MAEDA’S WITNESS PROTECTION

African American Cinema, American Independent Cinema, Capsules Blog, Comedy, ONE STAR, Women's Cinema

June 29, 2012

“Madea’s Witless Protection” would be a better title for Tyler Perry’s interminable, tin-eared comedy. Cole Smithey.

4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH

American Independent Cinema, Art Film, Capsules Blog, THREE STARS

March 20, 2012

Filmmaking legend Abel Ferrara adds his own installment to the cinema of apocalypse with a stagey reverie occuring, like Lars…

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

American Independent Cinema, Capsules Blog, Documentary, FOUR STARS

October 1, 2010

Documentarian Davis Guggenheim petitions the same level of cultural awareness about American education myths as his film “An Inconvenient Truth”…

CARNIVAL OF SOULS — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

American Independent Cinema, Black and White, Capsules Blog, Classic Cinema, Criterion Collection, Cult Film, FIVE STARS, Horror, SHOCKTOBER!

May 22, 2010

“Carnival of Souls” is one of the trippiest horror movies ever made. Anyone who thinks “The Sixth Sense” is a…

MS. 45 — CLASSIC FILM PICK

American Independent Cinema, Capsules Blog, Classic Cinema, FIVE STARS, , Suspense, Thriller, Video Essay, Women's Cinema

February 1, 2009

Abel Ferrara’s 1981 cult über thriller is a badass feminist take on the good-old-bad-old days of ’70s-’80s Manhattan that gave…

COLE SMITHEY’S CLASSIC CINEMA