Word: auteurism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
They show movies here too--a thousand or so for every conceivable taste. As an actor who tests himself spiritually as well as physically with every role, you would have appreciated Alain Cavalier's Therese, the austere yet accessible biography of St. Therese Martin. As the auteur of Staying Alive, you would have been impressed by the cinematic virtuosity of Andrei Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice, an end-of-the-world antidrama in which all the excitement is in the composition of images, the balletry of actors and camera, the surprise of lighting, the big crazy fire at the climax...
...irrelevant and near to tasteless. She is played by Lillian Gish, and the movies' oldest pro clearly understands that she is trapped in Sweet Liberty's dreariest neighborhood. She does her brash best to break loose, but her efforts are more brave than successful. Doubtless her first auteur, D.W. Griffith, warned her there would be roles like this. And movies like this, signaling good intentions at every turn, but never quite achieving them...
...success and talent, Spielberg's weaknesses are prominently displayed in this foray beyond the safe climes of thrill-a-minute B-movie homages and suburban kiddie flicks. He is a craftsman, not an auteur, and one hopes his artistic imperialism will not cause him to stomp all over Anglo-Saxon culture's other golems...
...Spielberg has surprised us before: as an auteur prodigy, as the thrillmaster of Duel and Jaws, as the savvy director who could reinvent the movies' innocence. The man is only 37 now, and his toughest audience is himself. You needn't be a child to believe that this movie magician still has astonishments in store...
...rites of summer! Baseball and sunbathing. Picnics by the old swimming hole. Heat prostration and killer mosquitoes. Steven Spielberg movies. For the fifth consecutive summer, this tireless auteur-mogul has placed his name on a fantasy adventure or two designed to turn sentient adults into wonder-lusting children. Spielberg directed neither of the inevitable hits before us: he wrote the story and served as an executive producer of The Goonies; he shepherded Back to the Future toward production, then pretty much left the film's creators on their merry own. But his candy-smirched fingerprints are evident on both projects...