Brian De Palma

Latest Articles

Review: Mesrine: Public Enemy #1

Cassel fights the power once more
Vincent Cassel is bigger and badder in Public Enemy #1 , which covers the seven years leading to bank robber Jacques Mesrine’s gory death in 1979.
By BETSY SHERMAN | September 01, 2010

Mostly noir

And mostly masterpieces, at the Museum of Fine Arts, June 2-13.
The definition of film noir has become elastic through the years. Of the five movies included in the MFA’s series “Rialto’s Best of British Film Noir” only two, strictly speaking, are noirs: Brighton Rock, Graham Greene & Terence Rattigan’s adaptation of Greene’s novel, and The Third Man, Greene’s most famous collaboration with the filmmaker Carol Reed.
By STEVE VINEBERG | May 26, 2010

Eagle Eye

A credulity-be-damned plot
The trouble with Shia? He’s no Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, or Cary Grant.
By BRETT MICHEL | October 02, 2008

Smoke screens

Does a surge of stoner movies mean America is going to pot?
What does it say about America that marijuana movies are a hot genre right now, perhaps hotter even than in the heyday of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong’s 1978 Up in Smoke ?
By PETER KEOUGH | August 18, 2008

The medium is the movie

In new films, truth is fluid — and controlled by the click of a button
In almost every movie you go to these days you’ll see another screen — a television, a computer, even another movie screen — within the screen you’re watching.
By PETER KEOUGH | March 05, 2008

Auteur land?

‘Film Culture’ in 2007
Granted, Sweeney Todd is a grim, violent, misanthropic musical.
By GERALD PEARY | December 17, 2007

Redacted

The camera war
The Iraq War movies are starting to resemble the war itself: miscalculated, mishandled, unpopular, and with no end in sight. Scialfa
By PETER KEOUGH | November 14, 2007

Heavy casualties

History repeats in De Palma’s Redacted
In 1989, filmmaker Brian De Palma directed the potent Hollywood feature Casualties of War , taking his audience back in time to a vile true-life incident from Vietnam.
By GERALD PEARY | November 13, 2007

Shafted

Ridley Scott packages American Gangster
American Gangster , Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Mark Jacobson’s New York magazine article about ’70s Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas, is as generic as the title.
By PETER KEOUGH | October 31, 2007

Armies of the light

Norman Mailer’s primal screen at the HFA
Maybe the trauma of another intractable war has sparked the movies’ recent interest in ’60s headliners.
By PETER KEOUGH | September 18, 2007

Illegal tender

Ineptitude and idiocy
Let’s just say Brian De Palma’s Scarface has a lot to answer for.
By PETER KEOUGH | August 29, 2007

Body dabble

Brian De Palma makes a mess of The Black Dahlia
At times Brian De Palma shows signs of the genius some attribute to him. Watch the trailer for The Black Dahlia (QuickTime)
By PETER KEOUGH | February 20, 2007

Ennio Morricone

Ennio Morricone, Radio City Music Hall, February 3, 2007
Some years ago in these pages Mark Moses wrote that he couldn’t imagine there was ever a time when “My Girl” didn’t exist — even though he was born before the song was recorded.
By CHARLES TAYLOR | February 05, 2007

New to DVD: December, 20 2006

The Descent, Factotum, Jackass: Number Two
Plus the Black Dahlia and The Last Kiss .
By NEW TO DVD | December 19, 2006

Greatest hits

Hits and misses
So that’s how World War II started.
By PETER KEOUGH AND PAUL BABIN | September 22, 2006

Pedro, Borat, and a castrato

The 31st Toronto International Film Festival
As usual, dedicated film critics were too occupied seeing four or five movies a day to note the swarm of A-list celebrities at the 31st Toronto International Film Festival.
By GERALD PEARY | September 20, 2006

Black and blond

The hideous sorority of Hollywood’s Black Dahlia and Boston’s Swedish nanny
She didn’t need an excuse to go out that night. Body dabble: Brian DePalma makes a mess of The Black Dahlia . By Peter Keough Dead flowers: James Ellroy on the movie and the obsession. By Peter Keough
By BILL JENSEN | September 18, 2006

Mission implausible

Mission: Impossible III will self-destruct in 7500 seconds
Like the adrenaline shot that invigorates one of his characters, television wunderkind J.J. Abrams’s stab at the billion-dollar Tom Cruise spy franchise briefly gets your heart pounding, only to ultimately fail at bringing much-needed life to the latest reworking of Bruce Geller’s TV relic.
By BRETT MICHEL | May 05, 2006