Original Cinemaniac

Movies

Peter von Kant

            When German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder died in 1982, I was reminded of the funeral of another director- Ernst Lubitsch in 1947. Afterwards, Billy Wilder and William Wyler were leaving the burial and Wyler said “Well, no more Lubitsch,” and…
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Neon Lights

             Neon Lights is an inventively twisted psychological thriller that’s more like a nightmare glimpse inside a disordered mind.             Clay (Dana Abraham) is a tech giant and visionary, but he is starting to lose it. There is even a threat…
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Lost Highway (4K Restoration)

            A thick cloud of menace hangs over David Lynch’s brilliant, nightmarish creep-fest. What begins as a story of a jazz musician (Bill Pullman) and his wife (Patricia Arquette) who receive mysterious videotapes showing static shots of the outside of their…
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Gaspar Noe’s Vortex

            Opening at IFC Center on Friday April 29 is Vortex, director Gaspar Noe’s shattering portrait of an elderly couple shakily hanging on by a thread in their cluttered, lived-in flat.              The great Italian director Dario Argento plays the husband, with…
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Best Films of 2021

            For someone like me that was practically breastfed in a movie theater, it surprised me how strange it was to first step into one after the pandemic. And to see this massive movie palace filled with only three ticket holders…
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