Two Ends Without a Middle: On David Lynch’s Kitsch
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[…]
Category: Artists
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors · Drama
A Fresh Face in the Crowd: Judy Holliday in George Cukor’s The Marrying Kind
“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
Chaotic Coherence: Revisiting Don’t Look Now (1973) in the Wake of Sutherland’s Death
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
Shapes Through Time and Space: An Interview with Ken Jacobs About His Abstract 3D Film 3X3D
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
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: Revisiting Sam Peckinpah’s Unrealized Western on Criterion
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
Bresson, Schrader, and the Fool: Transcendental and Materialist Interpretations in the Films of Robert Bresson
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
Book Review: Carrie Courogen, Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius
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
Spectacles of Property and Perversion: Todd Jason Cook and the Lisa’s Nightmares Series
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
Don’t Be Weird: Heroes, Villains, and the Reinforcement of Class Distinctions in Modern Blockbusters
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
The Sweet East’s Online Odyssey: In Conversation with Palme d’Or-Winning Producer Alex Coco
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
Book Review: Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By Philip Gefter
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
Mercs and Mortality: Emesis Blue, a Fan-Made Team Fortress 2 Horror Flick
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
A Difficult Woman: The Disobedient Life of Jean Muir
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: A DeLillo–Cronenberg Mutation
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
Gazing at Gary Cooper: Sex, Power, Gender, and the Body in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), Ball of Fire (1941), and Love in the Afternoon (1957)
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
Simply Human: Bob Clark’s Murder by Decree
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[…]
Artists · Directors · Indies · LGBT & Queer · Mondo Culture · UFOs
Whispers from Space: Life as a Hollywood Insider/Outsider
Filmmaker Ralph Coon speaks frankly to Tony Conn about his cult UFO documentary, the hidden side of Hollywood, and doing heroin with Adam Parfrey. * * * Ralph Coon might[…]
Books · Crime · Directors · Drama · Franchises & Series · War
Book Review: Sam Wasson, The Path to Paradise: A Francis Ford Coppola Story. Harper, November 2023, 400pp, $32.99
Coppola not only lived for his films but also lived in and through them, in a constant process of inventing and reinventing himself both as an artist and as a[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Drama · Labor
Strategizing Solidarity: Ken Loach’s The Old Oak (2023)
“There can be no resistance without memory or universalism” – Jean-Luc Godard, In Praise of Love (2001) * * * With his new feature, The Old Oak (2023), Ken Loach[…]
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