Noah Baumbach isn’t exactly the first name in a list of directors that comes to mind for a documentary about renowned filmmaker Brian De Palma. With Baumbach’s own work as of late revolving around young and somewhat hip New Yorkers (Frances Ha and his recent release Mistress America), it’s not what anyone might naturally expect him to take on as his next project.
Dressed to Kill has a perfect blend of De Palma story with De Palma style, where each is equally in the service of the other
In Brian De Palma’s Sisters, the titular siblings are French-Canadian Siamese twins surgically separated as adults. Danielle is gentle and lovely, and Dominique gloomy and anguished. This dynamic is complicated by the fact that the former needs the latter to develop her persona. Without Dominique, Danielle has no identity. To weave the fiction of her socially acceptable behavior, she must have Dominique bear the burden of her most disturbing desires. Yet the film, oddly enough, is not about Danielle or Dominique, but about the journalist Grace Collier. As Dominique recedes into the background, Danielle and Grace become the main antagonistic pair, a transition that culminates in an intense climax, a hypnosis dream, that imagines them as conjoined twins. As we learn, Dominique has been dead from the outset, and Danielle has transformed into her in moments of sexual and emotional excitement.
Angel is a 1937 feature directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Marlene Dietrich … deserving of attention, at the very least, because it’s a film directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Marlene Dietrich.
It was the first film to be adapted from a Stephen King novel. Its leading ladies were acclaimed for their career-defining performances, and the film pushed its relatively unknown supporting cast into the limelight. It is one of the very few horror films to be recognised at the Academy Awards and has sincere spawned a musical, remakes, and a sequel. However, 40 years on since the publication of the original novel, nothing has captured the sheer horror of Brian De Palma’s 1976 film adaptation. So, what is it about Carrietta “Carrie” White that makes her so special?
This piece naturally reveals the end of every film mentioned. You have been warned. What is most exciting about the pure joy of watching a Brian De Palma film usually comes as far away from subtext as one can get. Very few filmmakers can stage a major setpiece in their climax where the visceral excitement …
De Palma has relied on expressionist imagery and self-reflexivity for most of his career, so why is it a problem with Snake Eyes? Were critics expecting a different sort of experience because of the genre? Either way, the issue seems worth delving into, if only to unpack false notions of the film being a waste of time.
A sexy thief strips a woman of her golden underwear as her cohort collects them from the other side of the bathroom stall at Cannes. That the absurd, amusing, and schlocky sexuality of the opening heist in Femme Fatale comes from the mind of director Brian De Palma is hardly surprising.
It is obvious that Body Double (1984) is a combination of the plots of Vertigo (1958), Rear Window (1954) and Dial M for Murder (1955) by Alfred Hitchcock, and nearly as obvious to say that the film also takes cues from Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960) and elements from various slasher films like Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer (1979). Unfortunately, a good number of critical pieces on Brian De Palma are obsessed with listing off his influences and coming to the inept conclusion that he is merely a Hitchcock imitator with a couple of clever cinematic tricks up his sleeve. Few writers take De Palma on his own terms, though select critics are finally coming around, and most ignore the way he constructs his complex thriller narratives, creates exquisite images that take advantage of cinema’s unique artistic properties, and underscores his films with dissenting politics. Body Double features all of these elements and more, making this film one of De Palma’s finest and most entertaining in his extensive filmography.
Please note that the following piece contains spoilers for the final act of Blow Out. Taken at face value Blow Out, Brian De Palma’s 1981 film, is a nifty and tightly wound little thriller. It starts to run into some trouble, however, when compared to Michelangelo Antonioni’s seminal counter culture classic Blowup (1966), the film …
Carlito’s Way Written by David Koepp Directed by Brian De Palma 1993, USA In the upper echelon of gangster pictures, peopled with the likes of Goodfellas, Scarface, The Godfather, and Casino, there are forgotten gems that are often ignored. Brian De Palma’s Carlito’s Way is one such diamond in the genre’s rough. This is a film …
With the filmmaker’s customary humor, characterizations, staging, editing tricks, and a variety of camera effects, “Foreign Correspondent” is quintessentially, and unmistakably, a classic Hitchcock movie.
The Fury Directed by Brian De Palma Written by John Farris USA, 1978 In this action-suspense picture packed with paranormal activity, Kirk Douglas plays government agent Peter Sandza, whose telepathic son (Andrew Stevens) has been kidnapped by his colleague Ben Childress (John Cassavetes), working for a CIA-like secret government agency that plans to exploit the …
The term “mumblecore” is usually evoked as a derisive umbrella-term for the films of Joe Swanberg, the Duplass brothers, Andrew Bujalski, and several other twentysomething directors of the 2000s working with little to no budget and a lot of talking. Critics such as Vadim Rizov reject the labeling entirely, noting their disparate qualities, yet the term …
This classic horror movie based on Stephen King’s first novel, about a pubescent girl with telekinetic powers, remains Brian De Palma’s best film. Sissy Spacek stars as Carrie White, a shy, mousy teenager who is the victim of both her evangelical mother, Margaret (Piper Laurie), and of her cruel high school classmates, who bully her constantly.
Noomi Rapace gracefully, viciously owns her role as the ambitious Isabelle;, ascending a multinational company ladder one rung below the sociopathic succubus Christine (a sinisterly focused McAdams, as though Mean Girls grew up). Professional power plays of catty words and sexual possession are maneuvered, and soon love, humiliation, hallucination and murder are on the table.
Killer Snakes is a Shaw Brothers Hong Kong exploitation from director Chih-Hung Kuei. To use the obvious terminology Kuei was prolific, unorthodox and unafraid of filth.
Passion Directed by Brian de Palma Screenplay by Brian de Palma USA / Germany, 2012 The story goes that, when asked why his new film Passion contained highly stylized touches even in scenes that did not appear to need them, its director responded simply, “Because I’m Brian de Palma.” That answer should not be taken …
Carlito’s Way Directed by Brian De Palma Screenplay by David Koepp (Original Novels ‘Carlito’s Way’ and ‘After Hours’ by Edwin Torres) US, 1993 Unfortunate though the fact may be, even the most positive minded and patient of film addicts cannot always be satisfied by the product, a disquiet often in defiance of popular opinion. We …
A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist. Louis Nizer In his indispensable film study text, Understanding Movies, Louis Gianetti held forth on …
“The Fury ends up being a lame followup to the pyschokinetic mastery of Carrie that De Palma hoped to cash in on.” The Fury Director: Brian De Palma Writer: John Farris Starring: Kirk Douglas, John Cassavetes, Amy Irving 1978 United States | R | 118 mins Brian De Palma solidified himself as a household name after …
“Despite the film’s minor problems, Sisters is a film that remains worthwhile for any fan of Hitchcock or horror.” Sisters Directed by Brian De Palma USA – 93 min. Color Criterion Spine #89 One of Brian De Palma’s best known early works, Sisters is draws on both the psychological thriller and the kind of body …
Undertones: Volume 7 It’s the time of the year again where folks’ minds turn to the macabre and the ghoulish; where death is celebrated rather than feared and of course, when dusty copies of horror films are taken off the shelf to terrify and amuse. So, in honor of the Halloween season it would seem …