Fun and Games: On Michael Haneke’s 2007 Remake of His 1997 Funny Games
“Should we enjoy beingmanipulated?”
Category: Essays
What’s Your Function? How Movies Are Made
You mean you’ve tried panicking?
One Culture, Two Systems: The Rules of Spanglish and Twice Upon a Time
“When talking to others, what needs to be articulated?”
The Double Standard: The Twins of Two-Faced Woman and Sylvia Scarlett
“She is both sentimental and shameless.”
Actors & Personalities · Essays
Presence and Absence: Toward a Working Conception of Screen Characters
“A basic consistency on the actor’s part remains uniquely convincing as character, no matter how simplistic that character’s definition.”
Thank God for Uncle Tom: Race and Religion Collide in The Green Pastures
A kinder, gentler condescension
Actors & Personalities · Essays · SF & Fantasy
A Boy and His Dog: On Will Smith, Apocalypse, and I Am Legend
“Neville remains wholly oblivious, falling into each trap the ferals set … “
Only the Pictures: We’re All Editing, Ed
But about this audit
Composers · Essays · Music & Musicals · Sound & Language · Writers & Critics
False Consonance and False Consciousness: Contrarian Notes on the Ideology of Film Music
“Defenseless against music, I must submit to its despotism and, depending on its whim, be god or garbage.”
Wes’s World: Riding Wes Anderson’s Vision Limited
Paging crackle, energy, and wit. Come in, please.
IMAX – The Bigger Picture: Everything New Is Old Again
Superman, we need you! The BFI London IMAX is an ever-present background entity to all those who leave Waterloo Station and descend the steps into the city. Since its erection[…]
Oh What a Lovely Jail: Crime Is Old, Crime Is New
Just Like Those Mind-Forged Manacles Blues A desire for revenge is a normal response to crime. Ask anyone who has just had his house burgled or car stolen. But there[…]
Covering the Cinema: On Wallpaper in Some Films
What first drew me to the back of the frame, to the thin membrane standing between setting and set? I think it must have been Jacques Demy’s Les Parapluies de[…]
What a Waste The Apocalyptic Prophecies of T. S. Eliot and Alfonso Cuarón
“What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow / Out of this stony rubbish?” The leader of a pro-immigrant political group and sometime terrorist organization called The Fishes, Julian[…]
Amazing Scenes: Pretending to Be Normal
Pause. N-o-o-o-o-t! “Variety reports that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have teamed to produce a trilogy of Tintin feature films, with each director helming at least one of the features.”[…]
Sovereign Remedies: Queen of Hearts to President
A Progress Boccaccio’s Decameron, written immediately after the Black Death, hints at the arrival of a more egalitarian post-pandemic world. This was especially evident in the new approach to gender[…]
Across the Great Divide: Canadian Popular Cinema in the 21st Century
Indigenous film, global dreams1 For most of the film critics who have given it any thought, the term “Canadian Popular Cinema” is a vexing oxymoron. In a paradox that goes[…]
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