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The Freshman

“Everyone knows the basic image of Harold Lloyd dangling from a clock several stories up in Safety Last, but he’s a rarely watched performer. Despite being dubbed the “third genius” of the silent clowns, he frequently disappears behind the towering giants of Keaton and Chaplin. I say all of thi” read more

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte

“Restraint is never a word that can be bandied about with Robert Aldrich, but Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is a true spectacle of Grand Guignol camp histrionics. As a spiritual cousin to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is the ghastly eccentric to that film’s richer, sc” read more

The Met Opera HD Live: The Magic Flute

“ In 2006, Julie Taymor directed this heavily truncated version of Mozart’s famous opera, and the taming of the material leaves the production slightly listless. Not only was a large chunk of material edited out, but also much of it was changed to be more “family friendly.” The Magic Flute fee” read more

The Tempest

““We are such stuff as dreams are made on/And our little life is rounded with a sleep.”   Julie Taymor’s reading of The Tempest is heavy on the dreams, but light on the second half’s understanding of eventual surrender and quietness. The Tempest is an elegy and a humbling, and the play is ” read more

Across the Universe

“Who needs a plot when you can arrange 33 songs by the Beatles in random order and have a series of talented performers do them in a bunch of loosely connected music videos revue style? This is very similar to Mamma Mia, a hastily assembled collage of memorable pop tunes lacking a memorable or even s” read more

Frida

“When this project was originally shopped around town in the 1980s, no one in Hollywood knew much about the iconoclast artist Frida Kahlo. It was considered as a prestige project for an actress like Meryl Streep or Jessica Lange, very obvious choices for a proudly Mexican woman who wore the tradition” read more

Titus

“William Shakespeare’s blood-soaked tragedy gets the aggressive visualization treatment in Julie Taymor’s big screen debut. To watch Titus is to discover a film that argues that the limit does not exist for what constitutes “over the top.” This doesn’t just shake the rafters, nor does it bl” read more

Great Performances: Oedipus Rex

“A filmed performance of Julie Taymor’s variation of the Igor Stravinksy opera, Oedipus Rex originally aired as part of PBS’ Great Performances series. If you’re still with me after that introductory sentence, I suggest you seek this out for its artistic daring and soaring theatricality. Some o” read more

Fool

“Produced as a part of PBS’ American Playhouse, an independent producer of high-quality television films for first-time filmmakers, Fool’s Fire is something of Julie Taymor’s entire career in microcosm. There’s an obsession with using puppetry and masks, the ostentatious imagery, the general ” read more

Winnie Mandela

“Winnie Mandela tries to have it both ways as a conventional biopic and as a warts-and-all glimpse into a contentious figure, but it fails at being both by never digging deep into the material. It’s all handsome surfaces, Clint Eastwood style cinematography (so much blue filter), and a solid lead p” read more