The Crop Duster has two goals. One is to organize links to my critical work: reviews written for The Herald (Everett, Washington) and Seattle Weekly; and public appearances and TV jobs. Selected past work for Film Comment and elsewhere is also linkified. You may also link to my website of 1980s reviews and learn more about my book on Frankenstein and my graphic novel, ROTTEN.
The second goal is to keep a daily record of films watched, annotated with brisk, brief comments. It's a slightly more advanced version of the movie list I kept, in Flair pen, thumbtacked next to my bed when I was twelve.
You do the translation: "Robert Horton en un infatigable crítico residente en Seattle y colaborador habitual de Film Comment. Su espacio en la red está en The Crop Duster acaso el mejor blog de un cinecrítico profesional americano después del de Roger Ebert." --Ernesto DiezMartinez Guzmán, editor of Vértigo
We’re in the midst of a Scarecrow Academy semester on Zoom, this one called “The Art in Noir: Film Noir and the Director Part 2.” Join us for this free discussion series, which goes on Saturdays at 2 pm Pacific Time. Here I am introducing our next topic, for October 16th, a look at Ida Lupino’s 1953 film The Hitch-Hiker, with a special second feature in the form of the 1960 Twilight Zone episode also called (but unrelated) The Hitch-Hiker. I explain here.
Still on that documentary committee. So, a few to list.
Ascension (Jessica Kingdon, 2021), and Faya Dayi (Jessica Bashir, 2021). Two impressionistic documentaries, sans narration or storyline, both superbly photographed and rhythmically complex. Both, in somewhat different ways, are about systems of production; the former looks at various modes (mostly exploitative) of economy in China, from factories creating sex dolls to schools for prospective butlers, and the latter tracks the use of khat – the chewable leaf that provides sedative drugginess – in Ethiopia.
The Rescue (Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, 2021). Do we have the documentary Oscar winner here? The movie ticks all the boxes (although the extensive use of re-created footage makes it a little suspect, purity-wise) as it depicts the efforts to save that boys’ soccer team that got trapped in a cave in Thailand in 2018. You may know the outcome, but damned if the movie isn’t supremely suspenseful.
Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller, 1953). We had a nice session of Scarecrow Academy last week with this one; among other things, we talked about how “people gotta eat” is a deeper form of the criminal code than the usual “honor among thieves,” a quality that makes this hard-boiled movie oddly empathetic.
My piece for the Scarecrow blog this week, and etc.
No Time to Die. “What it lacks in speed in makes up for in attitude, as the glum mood of the previous couple of Craig titles is leavened with humor and a certain pleasing deftness.”
I’ll be doing my talk for Humanities Washington, “This Is the End: How Movies Prepared Us for the Apocalypse,” on Wed. Oct. 13th at 6 pm Pacific Time, online, thanks to the hosting of the Everett Public Library. You can register for the talk here and read more here.
I have a new episode of my radio show “The Music and the Movies,” this one listening to rock stars who turned to soundtrack composing in the 1980s. Hear what happened when David Byrne went to China, Peter Gabriel found Jesus, and Prince met Batman. Plus, Danny Elfman gets his Burton on and Randy Newman swings for the fences. Produced by Voice of Vashon.
Or check out the M&M page for whatever episode might be live at any moment (as the episodes must disappear after two weeks).
Another session of Scarecrow Academy tomorrow, Sat. 10/9 at 2pm Pacific Time via Zoom, as we discuss Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street. It’s free; listen to more below.
At my other blog, What a Feeling!, I’ve posted some big titles in my revival of vintage 1980s reviews: George Miller’s The Road Warrior, reviewed from an early screening at the Seattle International Film Festival; Paul Schrader’s Cat People, a colorful blend of Kinski and gore; and Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing, which, I was surprised to find out, was the first Craven picture I’d seen.
Please join us Saturday, 10/9, at 2 pm Pacific Time for another free Zoom session of Scarecrow Academy. As our semester, “The Art in Noir: Film Noir and the Director Part 2” continues, we will convene to discuss Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953), a terrific hard-nosed noir starring Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, and the peerless Thelma Ritter. Check the Scarecrow Academy page for info on how to sign up (you need not have previously attended), and if you must, listen to me introduce the film below.
Join us tomorrow, Saturday Oct. 2, at 2 pm Pacific Time via Zoom, for the first session in an eight-week course of Scarecrow Academy, the online discussion group presented by Seattle’s Scarecrow Video. This semester is devoted to “The Art in Noir: Film Noir and the Director Part 2,” where we pick up with more titles from the shadowy world of noir (and, this time, neo-noir). It’s free, and we begin with a consideration of Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950), starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. See the Scarecrow Academy page for more info, and go ahead and watch my video intro.
A couple of vintage reviews for my other blog, What a Feeling!, posted this week: Paul Bartel’s Eating Raoul, a hit indie black comedy with Bartel and Mary Woronov; and Bertrand Tavernier’s A Week’s Vacation, a thoughtful vehicle for Nathalie Baye.
It’s Scarecrow Academy time again – I will be leading another “semester” of online discussions for Seattle’s nonprofit Scarecrow Video, this time Part 2 of “The Art in Noir: Film Noir and the Director,” which begins Saturday, Oct. 2, at 2 pm Pacific Time and continues for eight weeks in the same slot via Zoom. It’s free! See the Scarecrow Academy page, or check the poster below. And now, allow me to introduce the series:
In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950). I will lead Scarecrow Academy again for its fall session, beginning Saturday Oct. 2 at 2 pm Pacific Time (Zoom meetings, that is), about which more to come. Our first discussion, though, will be about this dark classic, a film about Hollywood and compromise and violence.
Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray, 1956). Which made me want to watch this film again, for the first time in many years. The two movies seem connected, both very hothouse experiences, this one alive with color and widescreen dynamics, set against a society that makes people sick – or at least one that doesn’t allow them time for anything other than the business of making money.
I have a new episode of “The Music and the Movies” this week, on the subject of “Scott Joplin and Company.” This is a way of expressing my affection for the American genius, not just by playing a few cuts from The Sting but finding Joplin (and Joplinesque things) elsewhere in cinema. Produced by Voice of Vashon.
The previous show, “Experiments in Space,” is also still online. If those links have expired by the time you read this, you can access my VoV page and see what’s current.
Speaking of Voice of Vashon, I was interviewed on that station’s REALtalk show by host Susan McCabe, speaking partly of my Humanities Washington talk, and partly of the state of movies today. Check that here, if you wish.
At my other website, What a Feeling!, I’ve got three vintage 80s reviews to consider: Costa-Gavras’s Missing, with Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek in an example of big-studio more-or-less political filmmaking; Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill’s Soldier Girls, an excellent documentary from early in the careers of those filmmakers; and Robert Towne’s Personal Best, the track-and-field romance that really captured my heart at a tender moment.
Funeral in Berlin (Guy Hamilton, 1966). Michael Caine’s second film as Harry Palmer, flippant British spy. The film opens with a lively, colorful montage of life in West Berlin, followed by a series of bleak, depopulated shots of the East. So that’s how we got all those images in our heads. Evan Jones, who wrote a bunch of things for Joseph Losey (and also that disturbing Australian semi-classic Wake in Fright) adapted Len Deighton’s novel, with an uncertain tone but a satisfyingly twisty plot. Some interesting character actors in the mix, and Oscar Homolka hams it up as a potential defector.
Black Power: A Story of British Resistance (George Amponsah, 2021) and Subnormal: A British Scandal (Lyttanya Shannon, 2021). Two documentaries that overlap with Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series, as though providing the evidence for those narrative films. The first is a rapid-fire account of the various civil-rights groups in Britain (including the case that became the film Mangrove), narrated by Daniel Kaluuya; the second is about the insidious 1960s program that blithely shunted immigrant kids into schools for the “subnormal,” the background for McQueen’s Education. McQueen is also the producer of these documentaries.
Grosse Pointe Blank (George Armitage, 1997). Maybe it’s the reckless blend of comedy and violence, but this movie holds up pretty well. Armitage’s touch, a certain kind of jumpiness and screwball timing, gets into the film in various ways, including Minnie Driver’s performance, which has a scattershot feel appropriate for a character whose reactions can’t really be explained in a realistic context. It has a lot of the signposts of the American 80s film, but it’s also a commentary on the American 80s film. Watching John Cusack in his youth brought back the era more than any of the costumes or set design; from 1985 to 2000, his face was attached to a particular idea of a young leading man (or, because Cusack himself seemed to chafe at the idea of being an ideal, sometimes it was a criticism of the idea of a young leading man). Here, he lets other people act up around him, and in truth his performance seems a little vague, but maybe Cusack guessed that fit the character. In any case, as Cusack has slipped out of leading-man status, his run during this period is era-defining – not the movies themselves, you understand, but the face, and the quizzical, searching manner.
HATEFUL DEEDS is a novel of political satire and suspense. Read more and download it here!
FRANKENSTEIN
FRANKENSTEIN is my take on the 1931 film's making and legacy, plus some old-school film criticism. From Columbia University Press's "Cultographies" series. Click the image to order.
RT @ScarecrowVideo: Here's your Scarecrow Academy host @citizenhorton with a preview of what to expect from this Saturday's Zoom discussion… 6 days ago
New episode of "The Music and the Movies": 80s Rock Stars Composing. David Byrne goes to China, Peter Gabriel finds… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…6 days ago
The long-suppressed 1877 diary of a ROTTEN agent, now available for the first time!
Rotten
Be More Rotten
Learn more about the blood-soaked yet critically-acclaimed graphic novel, and order the trade paperbacks and the “lost diary” right now.
Rotten Diary
Get the long-suppressed diary of a ROTTEN agent! From Moonstone Books
What a Feeling!
What a Feeling!
My other website: a you-are-there journey through the flabbergasting world of 1980s movies.
