Dan is a poet, writer, critic, and founder of Cosmoetica - one of the most popular arts websites online. He is a member of the Internet Film Critic Society. His Dan Schneider Interview series is very popular.
In all the years since its release, I’d never seen the 1984 Oscar winning best film Amadeus, partly because classical music did not interest me, and partly because I have an aversion to ‘period dramas’, and...
Jean Renoir’s 1937 black and white film, Grand Illusion (La Grande Illusion), is often bandied about with Citizen Kane on the list of all time great films, but unlike that film, Grand Illusion was a commercial and...
Barbara Kopple is one of those filmmakers who can do just about any film well; so much so that when she misfires, as in her 1998 film on Woody Allen, Wild Man Blues, a critic may still give her...
Apologists for bad art almost always speak of ‘intent’, and, in a similar vein, bad critics always try to justify their ‘liking’ a bad film by praising it obliquely, often using words like ‘abstract&rsquo...
When most people think of the live television shows from the 1950s, that produced such shows as Playhouse 90, The U.S. Steel Hour, etc, almost universally what comes to mind is drama, usually penned by the likes of a...
Criterion Collection is releasing a new film from the acclaimed Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni.The synopsis notes: "Michelangelo Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman is a body- and soul-baring voyage into one man’s artistic and...
Cries And Whispers, (Viskningar Och Rop) a 1972 film of Ingmar Bergman’s, which was consistently and highly lauded around the world, upon its release, is not a great film, nor anywhere the masterpiece that it’s...
In 1959 a pair French films were released that became the twin pillars of the New Wave (Nouvelle Vague), and were instantly hailed as classics. One, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (A Bout de Souffle), was a bad film...
There’s a moment in Johns Sayles’ latest film, Casa De Los Babys, that is among the most poignant ever filmed. A young maid in an unnamed Latin American country’s main baby mill is engaged in...
Criterion is offering Insignificance on Blu-Ray, and I recently received the opportunity to review it. The film stars Theresa Russell, Will Sampson, Gary Busey, Tony Curtis, and Michael Emil. The review notes: “Four unnamed people who look and sound...