Hollywood was just beyond the horizon for the émigrés. There is no doubt that Curtis Bernhardt, Robert Siodmak, and Max Ophüls thought they would settle down in Paris and become[…]
What sneaker cinema is amounts to the sport shoe’s role in adding narrative or stylistic significance to a film’s mise-en-scene, themes, characters, or plot lines. And to be clear: ruby[…]
This brief essay will seek to answer the distinctions between mimetic and diegetic elements in a filmic text, isolate the voice-over as a unique event located between the strict division[…]
“The aesthetic features of post-horror replicate the mixture of shame, confusion, shock, and anxiety about the future experienced by liberal Americans in the midst of the Tea Party and Trump’s[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Essays
I think that this delicate line between reality, and fact, and truth needs to be more clearly defined. We have to redefine reality.1 – Werner Herzog There are dignified stupidities.[…]
Some actors’ gestures are the equivalent of a great singer, dancer, or athlete achieving the heights of their profession. And the reason so many people respond to Ford’s films by[…]
Mia: It feels really nostalgic to me. Sebastian: That’s the point. Mia: Are people going to like it? Sebastian: Fuck ’em. – La La Land * * * The popular[…]
Uncharacteristically, The Martian and Arrival do not present us with a problematic dystopian future with which to grapple; a future in which everything has always already gone wrong. Instead, they[…]
Filmmakers like Argento have no interest in sex per se. Suffering seems inessential, but terror and death are key, photographed with the same clinical absorption and aesthetic gloss as giallo-maestros[…]
The middle-aged theater owner who preferred a discreet lifestyle suddenly found himself in the media spotlight only ten days after the Black Dahlia’s murder. Someone had gathered Elizabeth Short’s personal[…]
Essays · French Cinema · Romance
What will become of Camilla? A character who is unsupported by theatrical context must cease to exist; when the curtain falls, the characters are unleashed from aesthetic dimensions. Renoir makes[…]
Essays · Historical & Epic · War
. . . or how the first surf films helped American men get over the war and change their act * * * In the 1950s and early ’60s, a[…]
MY CHUM, JANE LILEE, Being as it’s coming up on the anniversary of our meeting, I thought I’d check in with you, and maybe get points for remembering the occasion.[…]
Directors · Essays · Philosophy
“Mystery is good, confusion is bad. And there’s a big difference between the two.” – David Lynch * * * A survey of the critical literature pertaining to David Lynch’s[…]
But the choice to get this thing out of her body, to have an abortion, is made up of equal parts self-compassion and safety. It is entirely locatable. Ronnie is[…]
Activist & Political · Drama · Essays
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Essays
The existence of films such as Black Samson and The Spook Who Sat by the Door reminds us that there was an era, however fleeting, in which commercial films discarded[…]
Drama · Essays · Uncategorized
Isn’t something less reassuring and a lot more interesting going on – something more inclusive, diverse, and genuinely universal? * * * There are still too many human beings on[…]
