Email Author Michael Fox

2010 Stories by Michael Fox

• He Shoots! He Dies!

  published August 25, 2010

  The World Cup final was an all-European affair, alleviating the quadrennial fear of last-minute South American disappointment and fury. (If... More >>

• Monday's Pick: Not Necessarily Noir

  published Aug 23, 2010

  Not Necessarily NoirRoxie Theater$7-$10Film noir, as it's classically defined, had a circumscribed lifespan from the early postwar about-to-boom years through the late 1950s, when color films began to... More >>

• Cosmic Ray

  published August 18, 2010

  The Achilles heel of computer-generated visual effects, once you get past the initial ooh-aah of watching a 50-story tidal wave crest over Los... More >>

• Fatal Attractions

  published August 18, 2010

  Film noir, as it’s classically defined, had a circumscribed lifespan from the early postwar about-to-boom years through the late 1950s, when... More >>

• India’s Got Talent

  published August 11, 2010

  The costumes may be Day-Glo trippy, but it’s the swirling, seductive soundtracks that make Bollywood movies so irresistible. After all, the... More >>

• The War at Home

  published August 11, 2010

  The veteran Japanese director Junichi Suzuki has observed that most of his countrymen are unaware of the contributions — and sacrifices... More >>

• Hopped Up

  published August 4, 2010

  In his early TV and screen roles, Dennis Hopper displayed some of the intensity, impatience, and rebelliousness that made James Dean and Marlon... More >>

• Life During Wartime

  published July 28, 2010

  It’s a sign of desperation, more than anything, that flotillas and films are the prevailing Palestinian tactics at the moment. While seagoing... More >>

• Die Laughing

  published July 28, 2010

  Paul Mazursky turned 80 in April, but the writer-director of Next Stop, Greenwich Village, and Down and Out in Beverly Hills —... More >>

• Sold, Soul, Rock, Roll

  published July 21, 2010

  The '70s suck — Journey and disco are the devil’s spawn. The '70s rock — God save Queen, Bowie, and Springsteen. In which category... More >>

• Border Disputes

  published July 21, 2010

  Ex-con Jack Abramoff isn’t invited to the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, but Bugsy Siegel, Arnold Rothstein, and Louis... More >>

• Robot Wars

  published July 14, 2010

  In a weird yet illuminating coincidence, the most ambitious and accomplished sci-fi flick of 2010 opens the very day that the restoration of a... More >>

• Headbangers' Ball

  published July 7, 2010

  Teenage mutants. Vengeful transsexuals. Zombie stoners. Shameless porn stars. Grindhouse legends. Takashi Miike. If there’s one bash on the... More >>

• Cumming Attraction

  published July 7, 2010

  You may have recently seen Alan Cumming introducing the fall '09 season of Masterpiece Mystery! (currently in reruns) on PBS, dapper in a... More >>

• Icy Hot

  published June 30, 2010

  Timing is everything, or at least something, and once in a while the forces of justice catch a break. Two weeks ago, certified prick Rush Limbaugh... More >>

• The Dream Syndicate

  published June 30, 2010

  When German painter, graphic artist, experimental filmmaker, and radical theorist Hans Richter moved to New York in 1941, he was one among dozens... More >>

• Yes, 101

  published June 23, 2010

  Idly fanning herself in a second-story window, the titular obscure object of desire in Manoel de Oliveira’s Eccentricities of a Blond... More >>

• Pedal Power

  published June 23, 2010

  From The Jazz Singer on, innumerable family dramas and comedies have been driven by the children of immigrants restlessly (and often... More >>

• Wednesday's Pick: 'Ozu on Sentimental Tokyo' at VIZ Cinema

  published Jun 16, 2010

  "Ozu on Sentimental Tokyo"The Only Son, 5 p.m.Early Spring, 7 p.m.VIZ Cinema$8-$10In the annals of audacious counterprogramming, it's hard to beat a Yasujiro Ozu series going up against Hollywood's su... More >>

• Queer Close-Ups

  published June 9, 2010

  The slippery, sprawling smorgasbord that is Frameline34: San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival offers delicacies for nearly any... More >>

• Manila Confidential

  published June 2, 2010

  In the Tarantino era, when a machine gun (or a baseball bat) isn’t a weapon so much as a punch line, directors have a hell of a time getting... More >>

• Family Plots

  published June 2, 2010

  In the annals of audacious counterprogramming, it’s hard to beat a Yasujiro Ozu series going up against Hollywood’s summer onslaught of... More >>

• Freddie, We Hardly Knew You

  published May 26, 2010

  Farrokh Bulsara’s parents were from Gujarat, so it wasn’t an unusual choice to send him to a boarding school near Bombay (as it was... More >>

• String Theory

  published May 26, 2010

  Paul Festa takes a palpably hands-on approach to art — a response, perhaps, to the hand injury that derailed his career as a concert... More >>

• Ciao, Capitalism

  published May 26, 2010

  A bad economy is no laughing matter, yet the Great Depression birthed the screwball comedy, spawning dozens of cynical variations on romantic and... More >>