Given Mann’s consolidation as perhaps American cinema’s greatest film auteur does a film like The Keep hold any bearing on his reputation today? What can the film tell us about Mann that we don’t already know? The Keep is the film that Mann has rarely acknowledged. It had a troubled production history and Mann’s original […]
Category: Michael Mann
THE JERICHO MILE (Dir. Michael Mann, 1979, US) – Out of Time
Mann’s exceptional staging of action sequences often amount to an orgasmic visual and sensory poetry. Mann’s action is not dirty but graceful. It has a kind of scholarly attention to detail made implicit in the micro gestures of his characters that amplify a grand psychological schemata. In 1979 Michael Mann was 36 when he co-wrote and […]
BLACKHAT (Dir. Michael Mann, 2015, US) – Moments, Impressions and Aesthetics
Defining moments in films can go unnoticed since the visual expressionism of most filmmakers is relatively provincial, acquiescing to broader commercial empathies. It is not right to reduce or distil the essence of Mann’s films to mere moments, as this would make the claim his films work fleetingly and intermittently. Moments can also be interpreted […]
VIDEO ESSAY on Michael Mann’s MANHUNTER (1986)
This new video essay on Manhunter (1986) is a continuing exploration of the films of Michael Mann and follows on from last year’s look at Thief (1981).
