Activist & Political · Comedy · Drama
It’s easy to mistake The Sweet East for a progressive indictment of modern America, with its gun-wielding conspiracy theorists and predatory authority figures – but they belie a blasé politics[…]
This man who watches you returns from hell […]; he is hollow, he is full of air. Dry hands hold him upright from behind, like a house of cards being[…]
Comedy · LGBT & Queer · Sex & Relationships · Uncategorized
As seen with Jordan and Mateo, Silva extends his self-fictionalization to most of the cast, taking actors and regurgitating them as screen versions of themselves. Sometimes the cinematic portraits come[…]
Crazy Rich Asians’ re-orientalization of Asians reinforces Eurocentrism and the Western gaze. Feminist and Orientalist readings of this film ultimately divulge the ability of Asians in the West to subconsciously[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Comics · Eastern European · Hollywood
S. Z. Sakall’s ultra-rare 1954 memoir, The Story of Cuddles, attests that there was more to the comic actor than adorable fretfulness and jiggly jowls * * * He was[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Directors
“‘You can’t control life,’ he tells us in that film. ‘”It doesn’t wind up perfectly. Only art you can control. Art and masturbation.'”
Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · Mystery
Whereas the Dude is a wholly passive protagonist, thrown begrudgingly into the chaos of conspiracy by the force of pure coincidence and designs of other, more motivated actors, Under the[…]
Comedy · Drama · French Cinema
Amélie brings life to the unseen. * * * Talk with someone about a piece of art, and they’ll tell you about themselves. Let me share my thoughts on Amélie,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Feminism · Indies · Interviews · SF & Fantasy
For me, on Supergirl, I was 100% in. It was the biggest opportunity that ever happened to me, and the process of making the film was very nourishing. I think[…]
Comedy · Communism and Socialism · Directors · Drama · Eastern European · Russia · War · Writers & Critics
Billy Wilder turned to these two plays because they offered the situations, structure, and characters that would allow his imagination to flower and create contemporary stories – a patriotic military[…]
African American · Comedy · Drama · Eco · Race · Urban Conflict
The fundamental question of who will suffer the most from extreme heat, and on a broader scale climate change, is bound to systemic issues of race and class. Through Lee’s[…]
Comedy · Historical & Epic · Native Americans · Revisionism · Westerns
Buffalo Bill and the Indians joins a select group of films whose popular failure nonetheless represented an aesthetic success: Patty Hearst (1987) and The King of Comedy (1983), come to[…]
Activist & Political · Comedy · Counterculture · Experimental & Underground
This is an excerpt from the introduction to the author’s new book on Mr. Freedom (https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/isbn/9781800856943/). * * * The film calls into question both the American international and domestic[…]
Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · French Cinema · Mystery · Psychology
The question becomes: is it worth trying to be free? Is the struggle fruitless? Why can’t we escape our servitude to the past, to society, to others? * * *[…]
Absurdism · Comedy · Directors
Ethan and Joel Coen have shared writing, directing, and producing credits on their collaborations until their recent hiatus from working together. Here they are on location for their 2004 comedy[…]
Comedy · Directors · Eastern European · Romance · Writers & Critics
Lubitsch biographers and critics have accepted the lore that the Hungarian plays he used for his films were inferior. That widely held perception has come about because Lubitsch’s admirers want[…]
Comedy · DVD & Blu-ray · Music & Musicals · Production History
ALLAN ARKUSH: Get Crazy never actually got a real release, you know. It was in theaters for a month. . . . A month? I’m sorry, a week, in some[…]
Comedy · Crime · Drugs · LGBT & Queer · New Media
The Scary of Sixty-First expands the umbrella of “buzzword cinema” — it’s a Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy with a lesbian sex scene by a popular podcaster and it-girl of the edgy[…]
Comedy · Documentaries · Music & Musicals
This Is Spinal Tap is coated with the stylized veneer of a rockumentary turned inside out or, rather, back on itself as self-conscious dress-up, playful disguise. The cultivated image of[…]
Actors & Personalities · Comedy · Drama
You would never guess either from looking at him or from the “aw shucks” way in which he’s remembered that Stewart is responsible for some of the most erotic romantic[…]
