Actors & Personalities · Drama · Westerns · Women in Film
An excerpt from Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away, to be released March 25 by University Press of Kentucky, exploring Miles’s impressive career and her relationships with the[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Essays
Cruise’s performance as Mackey offers a unique opportunity to make sense of a Tate, and to see what all really lies right under the surface of this ongoing phenomenon. *[…]
The untold story of how the screen comedy queen of the 1930s and ‘40s nearly become one of very few women to direct feature films in postwar Hollywood. * *[…]
David Lynch died on January 15, 2025 at age 78. We celebrate this important auteur with the following analysis of some of the less remarked Lynchian themes and his work[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors · Drama
“A true artist” Cukor called Judy Holliday. “She could interpret a text with the subtlest detail.” Their creative relationship brought out the qualities that made her a new kind of[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Horror · Memorial · Mystery · Thrillers & Action
In Don’t Look Now, so much of this atmosphere hinges on the film’s unique style, one that often gets in the way of smooth narrative communication and clearly defined characters.[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Film Technology & History · Interviews
3D is used to record visual reality, but that’s where I take off to the unimaginable. We are (wonderfully) constrained by our particular physiognomy and I wouldn’t change a thing,[…]
Directors · Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · Westerns
Action scenes are what a summer audience wants, but in Pat Garrett the shootouts become episodic and lack the ratcheting up of tension, followed by its release at the climactic[…]
Drama · French Cinema · Uncategorized · Writers & Critics
I think the reason Bresson’s films resist singular interpretations is that they are composed of multiple, overlapping perspectives. His films contain elements of humanism, nihilism, absurdism, existentialism, transcendentalism, and numerous[…]
Books · Directors · Women in Film · Writers & Critics
Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius. St. Martin’s Press, 2024, 400pp., $30.00. * * * Published on the heels of Mark Harris’s[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Franchises & Series · Horror · Indies · Women in Film
Just as his characters presume safety and security in their home space, so too does his audience approach each title with a sense of comfort through repeat exposures. The unseating[…]
Activist & Political · Class System · Crime · Essays · Franchises & Series · Myth and Archetype · Outsiders · Politics · SF & Fantasy · Societal Trends · Superheroes
If you want to make a popular blockbuster, it better be about the right kind of person – and the right kind of person isn’t a loser. A decade ago,[…]
Comedy · Drama · Interviews · Picaresque · Producers & Studios
A conversation with Palme d’Or-winning producer Alex Coco * * * In Sean Price William’s The Sweet East, we are told “Everything Will Happen,” which may be a warning to[…]
Actors & Personalities · Books · Drama
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By Philip Gefter. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024. $42.00 * * * I love “making of”[…]
Animation · Animators · New Genres · New Media
The film may appear gamer oriented, but general audiences should find it accessible and entertaining based on its fright factor alone. It’s simultaneously a boon to content-starved TF2 diehards and[…]
Activist & Political · Actors & Personalities · Communism and Socialism · Race · Women in Film
At every turn, Muir was disobedient, unconventional, and disruptive; she simply didn’t care what people thought. At no point did it occur to her that she should curb her activism,[…]
Absurdism · Cityscapes · Drama · Literature and Film · Writers & Critics
Cosmopolis reflects the experience of a cancer patient, housed within a corporatized institution, dependent on the biases and whims of authorities, machines, and data. The book and film, poorly reviewed[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Essays · Romance
As with Monroe, his seemingly all-but-transparent method has proven remarkably difficult to emulate, much less duplicate. (Toles, 2003: 34) Whatever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type? That was[…]
Crime · Directors · Drama · Historical & Epic
The animal is the only genuine thing in man. – Frank Wedekind * * * A woman sits rhythmically rocking by candlelight, her eyes focused on a distant point. Around[…]
