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Costume Drama · Drama · Essays · Mystery · Psychology · Thrillers & Action
Like the subtle differences of someone else’s cleaning efforts, our past is inescapable. A seemingly small choice can have myriad consequences, and this is what Kubrick is on about in[…]
Directors · Satire · Scandinavian Cinema
Our prevailing moviemaking ethos calls for emotion to be tempered through a kind of ebb and flow structure, for an emotion to be slowly built toward and quickly moved away[…]
Counterculture · Profiles · Writers & Critics
Judging from the total lack of information on screenwriter Adrien Joyce (Carole Eastman), Academy Award nominee for her original story and screenplay of Five Easy Pieces, I could have concluded[…]
Artists · Sex & Relationships · TV & Streaming · TV series
“Even without him, it’s still about him.” * * * Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi calls his series The Show About the Show (2015 – 2025) radically honest. Arguably, he pays the[…]
Drama · Essays · SF & Fantasy
Perhaps this is a fantasy. Perhaps this is the father as imagined, not as experienced. Perhaps this is what the students receive, and what the son never did. And so,[…]
Biopic · Historical & Epic · Romance · Shakespeare
Whereas Hamnet tugs at a few well-worn heartstrings to make us weep, Shakespeare in Love opens out onto a whole new world, stretching our imaginations to other times and places.[…]
Cinematographers · Erotica · Photographers
Cinematographers usually frame influence through cinema and painting – Vittorio Storaro citing Caravaggio, Roger Deakins invoking Johannes Vermeer, Conrad Hall recreating Edward Hopper’s lonesome framing – yet many of the compositional systems they use today were first stabilized[…]
Artificial Intelligence (AI) · Dystopia · SF & Fantasy
Fiery the angels fell; deep thunder rolled around their shores; burning with the fires of Orc. – Roy Batty, paraphrasing William Blake * * * Los Angeles, November, 2019 Dark[…]
When everything is shown, little is felt. * * * Cinema has always been described through movement – of images, of time, of bodies across space. Yet what if its[…]
Comedy · Drama · Family · French Cinema
As a film within the evolving Klapisch oeuvre, what La Venue de l’Avenir (2025) looks forward toward remains, of course, to be seen. As a capstone at this point in[…]
Hollywood · Music & Musicals · Pre-Code
An essay excerpted from the new edition of Persistence of Vision: A Collection of Film Criticism, edited by Joseph McBride, 2026. Originally published in 1968 by the Wisconsin Film Society[…]
Comedy · Military and Paramilitary · Nazism · Satire · War
Chaplin is not merely parodying how a dictator sounds. He is anatomizing how fascism recruits, extracts, degrades, appropriates, scapegoats, and lies. * * * Charlie Chaplin’s opening Hynkel speech in[…]
Counterculture · Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Fairy Tale · Indies · Sex & Relationships
Even in the age of reevaluation, Borowczyk remains a problem critics would rather sidestep than solve. His films don’t fit the revival mold. They can’t be easily slotted into “elevated”[…]
Class System · Crime · Drama · French Cinema
What remains is a fierce critique leveled against money: the “father-master,” the heart of every exchange in free-market society, and the origin of the degradation of being first into having[…]
Drama · Politics · Thrillers & Action · War
The war didn’t end. It was put on hold. The system never slept – men like Gonzalez kept watch, women like Walker stared at screens, bureaucrats like that man filled[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Screwball Comedy
In a contemporary landscape populated by often-faltering comedies – films that try desperately to be clever only to end up feeling heavy – this 1942 picture recalls an elementary truth:[…]
Capitalism · Class System · Comedy · Drama
Released at a time when conservative hegemony was coming to an end, Planes, Trains and Automobiles can be contextualised as an example of a cinematic expression of an ideological conjuncture,[…]
Activist & Political · Essays · Franchises & Series · Politics · Superheroes
I only dimly perceived that one day Trump would threaten without provocation war against Denmark, so we could conquer Greenland, and who would willingly abet genocide in Gaza. I could[…]
Conspiracies · Essays · Superheroes
The opening shot of Bruce Wayne arriving at Max Schreck’s elite ball in Batman Returns, featuring a guest in a menorah headpiece. The shot is framed so Bruce collides head-on[…]
Brazilian Cinema · Horror · Labor
The horror in Hard Work is not that a monster exists; it is that the monster is structural. It resides in architecture, in managerial relations, in aspirational rhetoric, in the[…]
Activist & Political · Class System · Directors · Italian Cinema
Even after the radical shift in register with his collaboration with Massimo Fagioli, everything still holds up: the essence of historical struggle remains the true core of Bellocchio’s cinema, whether[…]
Mystery · Sex & Relationships · Thrillers & Action
In both films, the protagonist’s disorientation becomes a tool for the audience: we are not merely watching two men hunted by secret forces but two men whose consciousnesses have become[…]
Franchises & Series · LGBT & Queer · SF & Fantasy · Superheroes
Queerness and madness can be seen as dangers to the status quo, disruptive states that open up new possibilities. The question then is do you find this disruptiveness beguiling or[…]
Counterculture · Crime · Cult Cinema · Directors · Drama · Satire
Every aspect of his professional life was stage-managed with the same precision he brought to a tracking shot. The results were remarkable. Total artistic control achieved at a young age.[…]
