Donald Trump: Lynchian Monster
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” – The Mystery Man in Lost Highway * * * David Lynch is not a horror director. With the possible exception of Eraserhead, his films[…]
Category: Activist & Political
Activist & Political · Documentaries
Dispatch from Tribeca 2019 #2: Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
Herewith (we love that word) is our second dispatch from the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, brought to you by our correspondent Claire Baiz, who will be filing dispatches on some[…]
Roma: A Meditation on (Male) Mobility and (Female) Immobility
Even the languid pace Cuarón uses throughout the film seems to want to elevate the (feminine and domestic) virtue of soul-nurturing stillness over the (masculine) trait of destructive freneticism. Some[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Counterculture
Black Signifyin’: White Crisis in Spike Lee’s Blackkklansman
The stealthy campaign of subterfuge undertaken by Stallworth is only one possible stance of resistance. And in adopting such a form of civil disobedience, Stallworth aligns himself with a cultural[…]
Absurdism · Activist & Political · Philosophy
Disappearing Act: Traumatic Formalism in Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot (2017)
The film’s most problematic allegorical turn, however, is its subsequent and wholesale appropriation of Palestinian trauma. Despite the slaughter of four innocent Palestinians – by accident or not – Maoz[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Medical
Dispatch from Tribeca #3: The Bleeding Edge Premieres on Netflix
We’re reposting this review of The Bleeding Edge today, July 27, as it debuts on Netflix. See this important documentary. * * * This is the kind of cogent, well-researched exposé[…]
Unlikely Victims and Enduring Consequences: Kimberly Reed’s documentary Dark Money (2018)
Reed manages to reduce a sprawling, complex story into an engaging, if tentacled, 98-minute political thriller, focusing on Montana’s fight against dark money at the US Supreme Court, in the[…]
Activist & Political · Drama · Essays
Beatriz at Dinner: Eating Up the Whole World
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
Between The Butler and Black Dynamite: Servility, Militancy, and the Meaning of Blaxploitation
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[…]
Activist & Political · Festivals & Awards
Dislocations: The 58th Thessaloniki International Film Festival (2-12 November 2017)
Emblematic of the prevailing sober atmosphere was the festival’s Invisible Hands Tribute, a series of five films about the erosion of workers’ rights, unemployment, and collective action. * * *[…]
Activist & Political · Comedy · Horror
Watch it Again! Society (Brian Yuzna, 1989)
Yes, Society supplies the body horror, well crafted in all its sticky glory by Japanese effects expert Screaming Mad George, but it fuses it with teen movie, conspiracy thriller, and[…]
Activist & Political · Historical & Epic · LGBT & Queer
The Counter-Imperialist: Reflections on Bogdanovich’s Saint Jack (1979) by a Singaporean
Ironically, with the passing of the Singapore of yesteryear, the work that best captures the significant geographical landmarks lost to time is not a local film or documentary, but a[…]
White Privilege? It’s in the Fine Print (Django Unchained, American Hustle, 99 Homes)
The stories of Dr. King Schultz, Irving Rosenfeld, and Nick Carver contain a critique of American society deeper than just “white guys always get the benefit of the doubt.” These[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Historical & Epic · SF & Fantasy
The Legend of Tarzan: A Rich White Man’s Burden, or, Donald in the Jungle
Several questions suggest themselves. What ideological framework is revealed by the forwarding of a contemporary story in which the white man has lost his mojo and needs to struggle to[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · War
Casualties of the Spirit: Liberating John Huston’s Let There Be Light (1946)
Naturally, Huston was furious about the film’s suppression and remained so all through the intervening years. In his words, “I think it boils down to the fact that they wanted[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Music & Musicals
Los Angeles Cinema and the Utopia of La La Land
Few movies have represented LA with such fawning reverence and nostalgia as La La Land. The filmmakers depict a clean, spare, elegant city, sluiced in mid-century Technicolor, consisting almost exclusively[…]
Activist & Political · Biopic · Documentaries
Dispatch from Tribeca: Get Me Roger Stone (Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro, and Morgan Pehme, 2017)
Jeffrey Toobin, whose 2008 New Yorker article inspired this film, describes Roger Stone as “a malevolent Forrest Gump.” Stone is more than okay with that. He’s happy for people to[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries
Dispatch from Tribeca: Wasted! The Story of Food Waste (Anna Chai and Nari Kye, 2017)
New York’s prestigious Tribeca Film Festival started April 19 and runs through April 30. Claire Baiz reports on a film screened in the fest’s “Spotlight Documentary” section on one of[…]
Activist & Political · Counterculture · Crime · Drama
Watch It Again! Joe (John G. Avildsen, 1970)
The counterculture and the reactionaries are equally problematic in John G. Avildsen’s complex, underrated Joe. With its bitter, murderous white males at the center blaming their, and the world’s, ills on marginalized groups[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · New Media
Black Code: Documentarian Nick de Pencier Talks Surveillance/ Subveillance in the Age of Big Data
Black Code sheds light on the commercialisation of cybercrime through the development of surveillance malware by security companies for sale to governments. Referring to Orwell’s seminal work 1984, Shehabi notes[…]
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