In our media-dystopic, attention-predator 21st century, what’s happened to movies? Not just this week’s movies—all movies, the 130-plus-years of cinema’s legacy? Do we have to fight to keep it alive?
Michael Atkinson votes yes, with gloves off. One of America’s most widely published and notoriously contentious film pundits, Atkinson assembles here a quarter century’s worth of testament and interrogation, of cinema’s myriad manifestations and experiences, and of our often confounded relationship with it—the meanings and secrets and truths found at the heart of moviegoing.
From the covert significance of The Little Rascals and The Blair Witch Project to Hitler’s favorite movies and the quantum-ness of the JFK assassination footage—reassessing silent masterpieces, finding hidden codes in classics, dissecting New Wave figures, resurrecting neglected wonders, tearing “blockbuster” culture down—Atkinson delves deep and wide, waging a one-man culture war for movieheads, to rescue an art form under siege.
Here for the table of contents.
Michael Atkinson has been a film critic for The Village Voice since 1994. His books include the BFI Modern Classics volume on David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Exile Cinema (SUNY Press), Flickipedia (with Laurel Shifrin) (Chicago Reader Press), and the novels Hemingway Deadlights and Hemingway Cutthroat (St. Martin's Press).
For decades, Michael Atkinson has been hurling out film notes in all manner of places while seeming like a maverick. Part butterfly, part vulture, he sees everything and is immediately armed with zingers and amazing insights. At well over 500 pages, this feels tireless yet sometimes tiring. And I bet it's only a fraction of what he believes. He is essential.
David Thomson
Atkinson's sentences are as alive as a bulging net full of silvery fish dumped on the deck of a boat. So much flashing, so much vibrant emulsion leaping and slapping about, even when he’s not writing about my films. This guy knows everything, loves widely, and his writing awakens in me excitements for cinema I never knew possible.
Guy Maddin
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