The two films under examination here, The Night of the Hunter (1955) and Night of the Living Dead (1968), would have you believe that nothing harrows the soul like an[…]
Biopic · Drama · Essays · TV & Streaming
“In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in ‘blood and guts,’ and in living color, you are going to see another first – attempted suicide.” –[…]
Essays · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
In honor of its 15th anniversary, Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko plays throughout the U.S. this year starting March 30 at select theaters in a 4K restoration – in some cases in the[…]
O wad some Power the giftie gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us! – Robert Burns, “To a Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet At Church.” * *[…]
Counterculture · Essays · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming
“I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment – that of looking down within the tarn – had been to deepen the first singular impression. There[…]
The gender of work in the work films is a spectrum that includes both the neutered worker of The Bellboy and The Errand Boy and the feminized worker of Cinderfella,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Essays
Everywhere she was, there was Eden. – Mark Twain * * * So this is what it’s like on the other side. Not exactly how I pictured it. Nothing like[…]
Activist & Political · Biopic · Essays
These films aren’t merely exercises in cinematic glorification – like Clint Eastwood’s speech, they are a part of a uniquely American myth-making process, posing straw-man moral tests for their protagonists[…]
Activist & Political · Crime · Essays
“Hey, buddy. We’re exactly the same. What’s happening to these people happened to my ancestors, and it happened to your ancestors.” – Alberto to Marcus in Hell or High Water,[…]
Essays · Horror · Religion & Spirituality
If the evil spirit is “seen,” that is, reflected . . . he is overcome. – Marie-Louise von Franz Unmask Satan, and you vanquish him. – St. Augustine * *[…]
Our cinematic genome, meanwhile, is becoming – if not always more clearly defined – certainly more rich and diverse and, at the same time, more universal than ever. * *[…]
Regret is perhaps Payne’s greatest theme. The continual human dramedy, the elegiac comedy, a country full of people with limited potential raised to think everyone is special, confined souls struggling[…]
I have yet to encounter anybody who feels my fierce outrage at Scottie’s unfairness toward the necklace. That object is all-important, not because it is the vital clue to the Madeleine-is-Judy[…]
Dreams and Pistol Shots * * * From Leslie Halliwell to David Thomson, capsule reviews of Hitchcock’s Spellbound have made sure we know that the psychiatry on offer is pure[…]
Activist & Political · Essays · SF & Fantasy
To be a popular film, which is the intent of the Purge series, is to play into what an audience loves; and in the case of something it is not[…]
Drama · Essays · Writers & Critics
Today (July 20) is Cormac McCarthy’s birthday. He’s 83. We send birthday wishes his way by reposting Sophia Nguyen’s persuasive discussion of McCarthy and the book/film of The Counselor, which[…]
Activist & Political · Drama · Essays · War · Writers & Critics
The response to The Deer Hunter amounted to a serious public debate over the Vietnam War that extended beyond film critics to engage a wide range of viewers. It wasn’t[…]
In movieland, there is also the kind of coincidence where someone indeed has planned it, someone acting from behind the scene, manipulating appearances. In this case, a coincidence is a[…]
What I find in Wim Wenders I find in William Blake (and all interesting artists): a desire for a better world that does not underestimate the difficulties of achieving it[…]
The happy ending that sees the clown coupled with the girl never satisfies precisely because we know the clown’s appropriate place is one of “in-between-ness,” a position that stands in[…]
