Posts by Robert Koehler

arts•meme contributor  Robert Koehler is a film critic for Film Comment, Cinema Scope, IndieWire and Cineaste. He contributes film writing to a number of publications, including Variety and Sight & Sound. He has served as director of programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and AFI Fest, and co-created the ongoing Los Angeles-based film series, “The Films That Got Away,” sponsored by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.


Koehler on Cinema: the greatness, and terror, of a flood

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No words, no images, no sounds can fully convey the total horror of the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927. The book that comes closest to putting you in the middle of the most widespread water disaster in American history—it stretched across the entire Mississippi River valley and west, across the river’s tributaries, affecting nearly ...

Best of 2013 yet to play in Los Angeles

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After December’s endless ‘best-of-2013’ lists (our own list here!) and January’s blitz of stories previewing upcoming 2014 movies, it may be useful to consider the movie universe from a different angle. What interesting movies premiered elsewhere in the world in 2013, but haven’t yet screened or opened to the public in Los Angeles? The answer ...

Koehler on Cinema: Best of 2013

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1. Leviathan 2. A Touch of Sin 3. Inside Llewyn Davis 4. American Hustle 5. The Last Time I Saw Macao 6. Upstream Color 7. Gravity 8. Nana 9. Viola 10. Computer Chess 11. Museum Hours 12. At Berkeley 13. The Last Christeros 14. The Wind Rises 15. Sightseers 16. Pain and Gain 17. No ...

Koehler Clips: Camille Claudel, Lenny Cooke, Vermeer

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CAMILLE CLAUDEL 1915 The brilliant female sculptor Camille Claudel, according to the 1988 movie version starring Isabelle Adjani, was oppressively dominated by the towering presence of Auguste Rodin and effectively driven insane by jealous but more powerful men. But writer-director Bruno Dumont isn’t interested in that version or chapter of Claudel’s life. Dumont is one ...

Koehler Clips: Sondheim, Fosse, Nicolas Rey

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For those of us who think that the decline of the American musical theater (putting aside “The Book of Mormon,” coming back soon to the Pantages) is a pretty sad spectacle, we have a nice fix of the real thing with “Six by Sondheim,” an ingeniously conceived look at Stephen Sondheim’s art directed by his ...

“Inside” a portrait of the artist as his own worst enemy 1

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One of the most interesting things about the reaction to “Inside Llewyn Davis” (Arcight, Hollywood; The Landmark, Westwood) is puzzlement over whether writers-directors Joel and Ethan Coen intend a sarcastic portrayal of the early ‘60s folk music scene in Greenwich Village. The question isn’t baseless. Sarcasm has sometimes been a potent tool for the brothers ...

Sokurov’s astonishing bargain with “Faust”

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The Faust legend is so absorbed into the culture that any artist can make it their own. Alexander Sokurov, a director who always makes any story his own (“Mother and Son,” “Russian Ark,” “Alexandra”), took on the legend as the finale of a tetralogy on power which began in 1999 with the astonishing Hitler movie, ...

Koehler Clips: Iranian filmmaker featured @ REDCAT

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Among its countless ethnic/national communities, Los Angeles has Irangeles, the sprawling Iranian diaspora that extends from Encino to south OC and amounting to the largest group of Iranians outside of Tehran. Yet the city curiously seldom sees visiting major Iranian filmmakers. REDCAT is helping counter this odd pattern Monday with the presence of the country’s ...

“Nebraska” tries too hard to be loved

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As written by Bob Nelson and directed by Alexander Payne, “Nebraska” is a movie couched in two attitudes—warmth and stubbornness. The former is meant to soften the latter, the latter meant to put some edge on the former. Like Lee Marvin’s Walker in “Point Blank” who goes after the mob for the $93,000 he’s been ...

REDCAT’s Dutch treat, Miyazaki’s farewell

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An urgent message: Yes, AFI Fest continues hot and heavy through Thursday at the TCL Chinese multiplex, with such must-sees as Denis Cote’s dark and ironic “Vic + Flo Saw a Bear,” Hany Abu-Assad’s acclaimed “Omar,” and the year’s major discovery from the young Argentine cinema, “The Owners.” But make room tonight for Film at ...