The Bechdel Test was named for Allison Bechdel, whose comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For in 1985 measured female presence in movies by employing three criteria: Are there two or more women in it, with names? Do the women talk to each other? About something other than a man? Far too many mainstream movies [...]

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In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak [...]

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A Perfect World (1993)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by John Lee Hancock
Produced by Mark Johnson, David Valdes
138 minutes
Thrown into theaters over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in a bid to exploit the then box office popularity of its star Kevin Costner, A Perfect World wasn’t the movie that families who’d gobbled snowflake mashed potatoes and cranberry [...]

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Lolita (1997)
Directed by Adrian Lyne
Screenplay by Stephen Schiff, based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov
Produced by Mario Kassar, Joel B. Michaels
137 minutes
There’s a litany of reasons why the second film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is not something to enjoy. It’s based on a brilliant novel far too internal to put on film. It’s [...]

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