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Channel: Film Archives - Spectrum Culture
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Irrational Man

At one point in Woody Allen’s new film, Irrational Man, Roy (Jaime Blackley), the angelically patient boyfriend of college student Jill (Emma Stone), requests, exasperated: “Can we please change the...

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The Stanford Prison Experiment

Every Psychology 101 course covers the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, designed by Dr. Philip Zimbardo as a study of authority and the effects of institutional depersonalization, which ended in chaos...

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Rediscover: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s obsession with the films of Douglas Sirk doesn’t start and end with Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974). It’s not only Sirk’s flair for melodrama that attracted Fassbinder to his...

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Alleluia

Michel (Laurent Lucas) is a con-artist who seduces and swindles women. Gloria (Lola Duenas) is a single mother looking online for a partner, urged to send a message to Michel by her friend and mother....

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From the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Lucky Dog

Animal movies are generally considered a safe bet for kids, but recent exploration of Netflix Instant offerings proves that an extra level of vigilance may be necessary before children or animal lovers...

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Oeuvre: Herzog’s Feature Films: Fitzcarraldo

It’s nearly impossible to talk about Fitzcarraldo without discussing Burden of Dreams. The former, Werner Herzog’s most ambitious film to date, is the subject of the latter, a documentary by Les Blank...

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Southpaw

In a world where athletic achievement is often equated with actual heroism, sports movies are the go-to vehicle for redemption stories. There’s little need for metaphor when our hero can literally...

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Phoenix

Director Christian Petzold sets the tone for his slow burn WWII melodrama Phoenix with moving performances of the 1943 Kurt Weill-Ogden Nash song, “Speak Low,” which has become a standard and suits the...

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Listen to Me Marlon

Marlon Brando is one of the greatest actors in film history. He brought unprecedented levels of realism to the screen in the 1950s, chucking the standard style of melodrama to give performances of true...

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Revisit: Madonna: Truth or Dare

Twenty years before Justin Bieber: Never Say Never and Katy Perry: Part of Me, a two-hour, black-and-white documentary about Madonna was the highest-grossing documentary of all time. Following the pop...

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Big Significant Things

In the past two weeks, I have driven a total of 18 hours through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee and saw my fair share of the rural South and its tourist-traps (Cajun Encounters,...

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From the Vaults of Streaming Hell: Zombie Hunter

Dig deeply enough into the Netflix horror section—past The Human Centipede 2 and a dozen Hellraiser and Leprechaun sequels—and you’ll find an axe-wielding Danny Trejo looming large on a poster for...

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Horse Money

Horse Money is the culmination of a career founded upon constant aesthetic and, more importantly, ethical revision. From the moment Pedro Costa’s second film, Casa de Lava, attempted to add social...

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Oeuvre: Herzog’s Feature Films: Where The Green Ants Dream

Key to the Aboriginal Australian cosmology is the concept of the Dreamtime, a sort of animistic trance state which functions as both a pre-historical antecedent to creation and a parallel reality...

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The End of the Tour

Part biopic, part intellectual road trip, The End of the Tour follows Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky as he watches, records and eats candy bars with David Foster Wallace. It’s a warm and pleasant...

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Five Star

Writer-director Keith Miller’s street-smart crime drama Five Star features a clear-eyed depiction of New York gang life. Shot in and around a Fort Greene housing project, the film follows “five-star”...

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A LEGO Brickumentary

In 2014, The LEGO Movie’s bizarre CGI world somehow created a metafictional and fun film without ever crossing over into the territory of an overlong commercial. In 2015, there is A LEGO Brickumentary...

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Revisit: Parents

You may already know Bob Balaban. Maybe you’ve seen him as a repertory player of Wes Anderson or Christopher Guest. Maybe you know him as Russell Dalrymple, the fictional head of NBC subjected to...

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Best of Enemies

As their second nightly debate at the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach got underway, Gore Vidal came out swinging, charging his opponent, William F. Buckley, with ideological...

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The Cocksure Lads Movie

“I guess it’s just a case of the dropsies/ They drop me like a dirty shirt/ Oooh those flopsy topsy turvy dropsies/ Really hurt.” Those inane lyrics, delivered by Reg (Adam McNab) with the cloying...

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