Category: News and Commentary

Ingmar Bergman would have turned ninety-nine on July 14.  One of the true titans in the history of cinema, with a prolific career, distinct voice, and an indisputably prominent place in the pantheon—he is also one of our All-Time Favorites.  And so the crack staff here at Mid Century Cinema have decided to get a…

Recently we took the occasion of Dylan’s Nobel Prize as an opportunity to “consider some things Dylan,” motivated by our position that The Bob is not well understood beyond that circle of those who follow him rather closely.  We must immediately emphasize, following the Prime Directive, that we don’t know Bob, and make no claims…

Earlier this week Nobel Laureate in Literature Bob Dylan fulfilled his obligation to the Norwegian Institute with a remarkable speech that looked back over a few of the formative influences of his work (and they might surprise you). This inspired us to take a moment to consider some things Dylan, in part to provide a…

Is Olivier Assayas our greatest living director? If we believed in such pronouncements here at Mid Century Cinema, we could see the argument in favor. But we don’t. More to the point, as we found ourselves screening his films repeatedly (and, like Kubrick films, they invariably get better with each viewing), and musing about this…

This week’s movie was Chinatown, and you might think that having written about this one previously – actually more than once – that we would be out of things to say about it. But you’d be wrong. On this occasion we’ll address the movie’s controversial ending (a conclusion writer Robert Towne objected to so strongly…

On April 22, 2017 Jack Nicholson turned eighty, and although he has been a big-time, world famous, larger-than-life movie star for over a third of a century, he holds a revered place at Mid Century Cinema for an earlier phase of his career.  After ten years of struggle, at the end of which he was…

This week’s film was Sidney Lumet’s Network, a great movie that is so good and about so many things that one could talk about endlessly.  But we have already talked about it a good bit, in a post from last year, and in a cranky review of a recent book about the movie. So with this…

This week’s movie was Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky, a relatively little-known obscurity that should be included in any serious discussion of the great films of the 1970s. That this is generally not the case can be attributed to a number of factors.  It was an enormously troubled production—May shot a lot of film (legend…

This week’s movie was Francis Ford Coppola’s New Hollywood landmark The Conversation, one of the three films produced under the auspices of The Director’s Company, a partnership formed by hot-off-celebrated-hits Coppola (The Godfather), William Friedkin (The French Connection), and Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show). The arrangement with Paramount Pictures – modest budgets in exchange…