Patrick Dahl

4 weeks ago | ssense.com | Brian Karlsson |Ross Scarano |Amy Taubin |Patrick Dahl

Last summer, the Brooklyn Academy of Music hosted a restoration of No Fear No Die, an early and seldom-screened noir from the French iconoclast Claire Denis. It’s a spare tale of cockfighting and colonialism set at a tawdry truck stop-slash-nightclub outside Paris. J. Hoberman, that living legend of film criticism, celebrated the release for the “Rewind” column at the New York Times.

Oct 24, 2024 | screenslate.com | Patrick Dahl

A more able director than the TV-veteran Barry Shear might have better nurtured the parodic core of Wild in the Streets (1968), but greater tonal cohesion would rob the film of the odd tension that makes it perfect October viewing ahead of yet another most consequential election of our lifetime.

Aug 12, 2023 | screenslate.com | Patrick Dahl

Like shrapnel from a pipe bomb, the cast and crew of Winter Kills (1979) hurl themselves in a dozen different directions, variously sailing past one another or colliding for brief, brilliant bursts. Jeff Bridges stars in a grounded deep state thriller as an All-American failson uncovering national rot, while John Huston romps around in a screwball comedy as an oligarch tuned to the frequency of underground comix.