The Only 35mm Print of Tom Waits’s Big Time

|John Costello| When a character, on stage or on screen, breaks the fourth wall and another character notices and comments, something special happens. A skilled performer involves the audience as performers in the live performance. Unlike plays and fictional films, concert films… Continue reading

The Lyrical Loneliness of Down By Law

|Jackson Stern| Some of the best songs you can listen to when you’re at your lowest are the loneliest ones. When I was near the end of high school, I got my heart broken in a few different ways, like a lot of people do at that age, and I’d go for these long drives. Almost every day after school Continue reading

The Breathless Loitering of Down By Law

|Ryan Sanderson| In the first few minutes of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic, Breathless, Parisian bad boy Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) shoots a cop. The moment-as-scripted is very familiar. It’s a classic Hollywood film noir trope—the edgy criminal crosses a boundary from… Continue reading