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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

Testament of Orpheus

“A culmination of sorts of an artistic life, and the most deeply personal and revealing film that Jean Cocteau ever made. Testament of Orpheus is the final film in his Orphic trilogy, only this time Cocteau is Orpheus and the underworld is his own mind as we examine both the birthplace of his creativ” read more

8 x 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements

“A collaboration between Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, and Jean Cocteau, 8 x 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements is a quirky, avant-garde glimpse of a bunch of premiere artists having a lark. Shame that they didn’t invite the audience along with them. The title reveals the structure, a chessboard is a” read more

La Villa Santo Sospir

“A 16mm documentary of sorts made by Jean Cocteau at the titular villa, a vacation spot that would eventually feature prominently in his Testament of Orpheus, that surface textures is all about his “tattooing” of the walls but actually provides a glimpse into his artistry and process. Many of Coc” read more

Orpheus

““A legend is entitled to be beyond time and place.”   So says Jean Cocteau in a written prologue for his most direct wrestling with the Orpheus myth. Here, he makes not only edits and additions, but entirely new wrinkles and full scale revisions to the myth, these add layers of strangeness, p” read more

The Eagle with Two Heads

“After the storied highs and artistically daring work of Beauty and the Beast, Jean Cocteau’s follow-up is something of a drastic comedown and a minor work. It’s the odd man out in his small canon. There’s no flights of poetic lyricism, no smoke-and-mirrors special effects that enchant with the” read more

Beauty and the Beast

“If adversity and strife make for great art, then that perfectly explains why Jean Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast is one of the towering greats of cinema. As the rubble and dust settled from WWII, Cocteau created this pristine and immaculate piece of fantasy cinema to rouse the collective spirit of” read more

The Blood of a Poet

“The Blood of a Poet is surreal, artistic film that moves and breathes like a piece of diegetic poetry and synthesizes mythology. The film builds itself around an artist’s creativity and the myth of Orpheus, chops itself into four chapters, and a series of oneiric images add disorientating flavor. ” read more

Moonlight

“Moonlight is a prime example of the ephemeral and indefinable qualities of “it.” Here is a deeply personal story, sometimes achingly and uncomfortably so about one man’s defining and altering experiences across three different points. It’s just the personal empathy and emotional investment t” read more

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

“Painterly images and beautiful scenery cannot hide limp-dick kitsch of Elizabeth: The Golden Age, no matter how much pageantry they throw in front of you. It’s a vibrant production in service of historical revisionism and soap opera fable. It screams to the heavens and clatters like thunder while ” read more

Valley of the Dolls

“If Valley of the Dolls had the courage of its convictions, it would be an even better proto-feminist piece of pop kitsch. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of camp enjoyment to be found here as it covers all of the basics. The tenants of camp cinema are all found here in bits and pieces, things” read more

That Touch of Mink

“That Touch of Mink is the sight of the king and queen of distinct styles of romantic comedies trying to enliven mediocre material. Not even the considerable talents of Doris Day and Cary Grant can keep your interest in a movie that features a great kitchen-sink dramatist taking the directorial dutie” read more

Clash of the Titans

“Clash of the Titans is a swan song, not only for Ray Harryhausen’s career but for a type of romantic-adventure stories that are no longer made. While it doesn’t compare to its brethren like Jason and the Argonauts or The Thief of Bagdad, it is of a piece with those colorful epics filled with sto” read more

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

“Here is further proof that the third installment of a franchise is inevitably the weakest, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger is a retread of not only the two previous entries in the trilogy but the entirety of Ray Harryhausen’s career. There’s no wonder here, no fun sense of otherworldliness at pl” read more

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

“Ray Harryhausen’s second spin around with Sinbad the Sailor takes the basic formula that worked so well in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and cranks it to eleven. This steroidal sequel lacks the naĂŻve innocence of the original, but makes up for it in a bigger scope, more fantastical elements, more ” read more

The Valley of Gwangi

“The Valley of Gwangi was an inherited project for Ray Harryhausen. Originally intended by mentor Willis O’Brien as a follow-up to King Kong, with a few sequences of cowboys on the loose in Africa repurposed into Mighty Joe Young, Gwangi is actually the second run-through of this material after O— read more

One Million Years BC

“Some of the dopiest material ever committed to celluloid is found in One Million Years BC. There’s the gaggle of seductive cave woman, all big 60s mod hairstyles and fur bikinis without a speck of dirt or sweat upon their bodies, and the images of men outrunning gigantic iguanas and land roaming s” read more

First Men in the Moon

“After the artistic high of Jason and the Argonauts, First Men in the Moon is a drastic comedown. Here is a Ray Harryhausen movie where the limited budget shows, and instead of a cornucopia of tangibly strange stop-motion critters we’re treated to men in rubber suits. This Harryhausen film takes ov” read more

Jason and the Argonauts

“Ray Harryhausen regarded this as his all-time best film, and it was a moment of an artist correctly appraising their own work. This is not only the greatest film in his canon, but one of the greatest films of all-time. No, it’s not some deep, cerebral viewing experience, but this is what a piece o” read more

Mysterious Island

“If you’re wondering why Ray Harryhausen was brought on a Jules Verne adaptation, look no further than two then-recent live-action adaptations from Disney. In 1954, they brought about 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a still beloved piece of nostalgia that made piles of money and brought home two Osca” read more

Doctor Strange

“Praise be to the comic book gods, because Marvel finally made a film that embraces the entirety of cinema’s possibilities. Prior entries, and by that I mean practically all of them, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe lazily drifted towards a basic televisual style. These films are basically entertai” read more

Sicario

“The best thing going in Sicario is Roger Deakins’ masterful use of light. Deakins is such a high-level artist in his field that he can transform the most mundane and muddled of scripts into top-flight entertainments. He uses his consummate skills to make Sicario a beautifully murky, tension fill” read more

The Three Worlds of Gulliver

“One of the least known entries in Ray Harryhausen’s canon, The Three Worlds of Gulliver keeps a lot of the sarcasm while spinning out an “all ages” piece of fluffy entertainment. It’s relatively light on the stop-motion maestro’s creature creations, but heavy on the glossy fantasy spectacl” read more

The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad

“There’s a liberating sense of wonderment and child-like awe in this adventure yarn, picking up with his story on a return home voyage with a fiancĂŠ and a promise of peace between kingdoms. This simplistic framework is the perfect vessel for Ray Harryhausen’s stellar effects work and imaginative” read more

20 Million Miles to Earth

“Despite being made of a wire armature and a clay exterior, the creature from 20 million miles away is the most expressive and unique performer in this routine science fiction adventure story. Strength of story and acting are not the primary reasons anyone watches these Ray Harryhausen films, but eve” read more

Earth vs the Flying Saucers

“In light of Mars Attacks! it’s a bit difficult to watch Earth vs the Flying Saucers with a straight face, since Tim Burton’s homage/parody hybrid used it as the most obvious foundational subject. Still, once you get past that first batch of giggles, buckle up for a briskly paced piece of pulp sc” read more