Elvis Mitchell

“Why not Husbands? Why not? Because I can't think of anything more fun than the thing of the clash of acting styles that go on in this. Everybody is fighting for territory. You can almost, you listen closely, hear John Cassavetes' maniacal cackle watching these guys go nose to nose, tear duct to tear duct with each other.”

“How about Dexter Gordon in his film debut in this film, who was one of the most decent people you would ever meet, such a wonderful soul. Many dinners at festivals around the world with him. And tells a great story about Cassie Martin's Chris says he's in this film saying, you know, I said, you know, Marty, I want someone like you who is the solar decency but ruthless. And Marty goes, I can do that., so he's sort of an empress argue on this. But the Dexter Gordon Performance and Bertrand was...”

“To Sleep with Anger. Every Burnett film feels, has a sense of being lived in, but nothing feels staged. You can feel that intersection of American black life and Italian neorealism and also the Nouvelle Vague. I can't think of anyone who's more masterly about that kind of thing, about unobtrusive, generous filmmaking than Charles Burnett.”

“Here's a film that finally exists on home video. You talk about a film that probably has impacted as many filmmakers of color as any movie the last 40 years, it would be this one. Just the chemistry between the two leads and the way music is used and maybe probably one of the first big budget films that really bring the sort of slam poetry as a kind of emotional evocation. The director should have surfaced again.”

“My hands are shaking because I think that spirit of anxiety passes along. You're holding up The Parallax View. I got the title in that time. It's the Pakula film that to me feels the least studied. You sort of feel a kind of control of the camera in a lot of his films and this one feels like he's really trying to bring the filmmaking of someone like Fred Wiseman or D. A. Pennebaker. You want us to feel the anxiety in each frame.”

“Would you say Miller's Crossing? Wise, would there be a,, a Criterion closet without a Coen Brothers film in it? I have a specific love for this movie because as a comics person, I always thought it was kind of the version of Will Eisner, The Spirit, that if you did The Spirit, this would be it. People who burns are being punched in the head. He wears his head low, kind of his eyes. And at the end he turns out to be a little bit smarter than almost everybody else, except for Marcia Gay Harden...”

“The Essential Films of Melvin Van Peebles is a property of this. You're looking online to pick up one of these things that you should have it, but also what's really great about these movies is that they're really about the spirit of independent filmmaking that Melvin recognized. Rather than a blaxploitation film which means you'd be left in the margins, instead he made it about the selling of the film. Melvin was smart enough to realize the X rating wasn't copyrighted, so he just said 'Rated...”