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The End
In its nascent years NotComing.com was a decided acolyte to the genre writing of Danny Peary (Cult Movies and its two sequels, as well as Guide for the Film Fanatic), Michael Weldon (The Psychotronic Encyclopedia), and Video Watchdog. But there was already good company on the web: Filmref.com, MovieMartyr.com, GreenCine Daily, Outlaw Vern, and Mike D’Angelo’s capsule reviews, to name but a few. Consequently, film writing saw a renaissance, christening an era in which criticism became more available and democratized than it had ever been before. Now it seems anyone with the wherewithal to share the findings of her own cinematic excursions has the ability to do so quickly and accessibly.
This all began over fifteen years ago—long enough for films that have come in our tenure to have merited reconsideration. When we began we intended to shed light on cinema’s perimeters and make aware our readers of its great extent. And now this extent is as accessible as it has ever been. This is a great privilege for exploratory cineastes. But it diminishes the potency of our findings, and it is with this awareness that I announce that we are ceasing publication.
Reviews
Vernon, Florida
Vernon, Florida is a portrait of America’s fringes, a document of a place that seems to have remained endearingly beholden to archaic mores. This is a romantic pretense, however, and those who admire the film will almost certainly find the real-life Vernon to be far more mundane and less folksy, but its history uncharacteristically perverse and violent.
By: Rumsey Taylor On: 9 June 2014Reviews
Burn Hollywood Burn
One of the most spectacular flops in history, the film effectively ended the careers of Joe Eszterhas and Arthur Hiller, and it also marked the end of its film studio, Cinergi Pictures. It’s as though the film succeeds at antagonizing those whom it satarizes, and in result it is so noxious that few have opted to encounter it.
By: David Carter On: 4 June 2014Reviews
Pitfall
Amid stark mountains of black coal and decrepit mining towns, traitors, backstabbers, and murderers carry out their soulless machinations. For those in power, selfishness and greed are the order of the day, and for the workingman, a bitter life of endless toil is rewarded only with a bitter afterlife of endless torment. And yet, beneath the caustic social commentary that dominates the film lies an almost imperceptible championing of the incorruptibility of the human spirit, injecting this otherwise bleak forecast for humanity with a modicum of hope.
By: Thomas Scalzo On: 3 June 2014Reviews
The Adventures of Gerard
Jerzy Skolimowski’s films of the sixties – edgy, innovative, and challenging – were so clearly part of the collective new wave sweeping national cinemas of the day that the choice of The Adventures of Gerard as the first film of his international career seems doubly perplexing; it offers almost no connections with the work that went before.
By: Ian Johnston On: 2 June 2014Reviews
Ferdydurke
Ferdydurke is the film that led to Jerzy Skolimowski’s seventeen-year silence as a director—a disappointed Skolimowski withdrew to his house in Malibu and devoted himself to painting and the occasional acting role (Mars Attacks!, Eastern Promises. You could say the film is doubly obscure: adapted from a Polish novel that remains untranslated in the West, and only seen in Poland, France and Latin America.
By: Ian Johnston On: 23 May 2014Reviews
The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting
The information the characters pursue is of no tangible value, and yet they frantically search for the truth, overwhelmed simply by their desire to know the answers denied them. Ruiz denies giving the audience a firm context for the film’s events, relying solely on their mutual curiosity with a mystery about which they know nothing.
By: David Carter On: 22 May 2014