The American Art Cinema, 1965-2005

This rich and insightful book offers a refreshing perspective on American art cinema since 1965. With elegance, clarity, and rigor film critic Robert Cardullo analyzes and interprets the biggest art-house classics from Peckinpah and Lumet to Jarmusch, Soderbergh, and Lynch with a compassionate mind. Favoring a humanistic approach to the reading of independent U.S. filmmaking, The American Art Cinema presents close readings that go far beyond the naive stargazing of popular film reviews...
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This rich and insightful book offers a refreshing perspective on American art cinema since 1965. With elegance, clarity, and rigor film critic Robert Cardullo analyzes and interprets the biggest art-house classics from Peckinpah and Lumet to Jarmusch, Soderbergh, and Lynch with a compassionate mind. Favoring a humanistic approach to the reading of independent U.S. filmmaking, The American Art Cinema presents close readings that go far beyond the naive stargazing of popular film reviews but also resist the oracular theoretical pronouncements favored by purely academic film studies. Including three long retrospective essays and twenty review articles featuring many of the most significant independent movies from 1965 to 2005, Cardullo ultimately aims to explain how some American moviemakers continue to use the resources of the medium to pursue complex, significant humanistic goals.