Drama · Essays · SF & Fantasy
A Film for No One (Except Me): On The Adam Project
Perhaps this is a fantasy. Perhaps this is the father as imagined, not as experienced. Perhaps this is what the students receive, and what the son never did. And so,[…]
Category: Drama
Comedy · Drama · Family · French Cinema
Family Matters: Shared Space in the Films of Cédric Klapisch
As a film within the evolving Klapisch oeuvre, what La Venue de l’Avenir (2025) looks forward toward remains, of course, to be seen. As a capstone at this point in[…]
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Class System · Crime · Drama · French Cinema
Exchange and Virulent Sacrality in Robert Bresson’s L’Argent
What remains is a fierce critique leveled against money: the “father-master,” the heart of every exchange in free-market society, and the origin of the degradation of being first into having[…]
Drama · Politics · Thrillers & Action · War
Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite (2025): The System Works. Where Is the Human?
The war didn’t end. It was put on hold. The system never slept – men like Gonzalez kept watch, women like Walker stared at screens, bureaucrats like that man filled[…]
Capitalism · Class System · Comedy · Drama
The Deconstruction of Middle-Class Identity in Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Released at a time when conservative hegemony was coming to an end, Planes, Trains and Automobiles can be contextualised as an example of a cinematic expression of an ideological conjuncture,[…]
Counterculture · Crime · Cult Cinema · Directors · Drama · Satire
The Kubrick Production: How Stanley Kubrick Stage-Managed Reality
Every aspect of his professional life was stage-managed with the same precision he brought to a tracking shot. The results were remarkable. Total artistic control achieved at a young age.[…]
Activist & Political · Counterculture · Crime · Drama · Urban Conflict · Writers & Critics
One Battle After Another: On the Movie, the Critics, and the Moment
For a popular entertainment, One Battle is ultimately hopeful but not pandering. Viewers do not leave the theater with the spoon-fed feel-good reassurances offered by a Rocky or a Star[…]
Drama · Essays · Surrealism
The (Re)Turn: Vicious Retooling of Teenager Archetypes in the Twin Peaks Revival
Lynch takes the glamorized version of youth (even some of the glamor from his very own ’90s series) often presented on-screen and renders it unrecognizable. Dramatized teenhood usually tries to[…]
Colonialism · Drama · Imperialism · Melodrama
Postcolonial Melancholia in David Lean’s Brief Encounter
Typically recognized for its portrayal of middle-class repression and female depression, the film is also an early eulogy to British empire. The doomed flirtation signals an end to Britain’s love[…]
Drama · Essays · Men & Masculinity · Nature
Notes on Jaws Then and Now
The myth of the Great White bears numerous meanings, of variable relevance, from the perspective of then and now. Either way, the old Ahab type is unable to triumph, but[…]
Class System · Drama · Hollywood · Melodrama
Bostonians of Old Hollywood: From Now, Voyager to If a Man Answers
Before we were townies, we were snobs. * * * Before Hollywood regarded “Bostonian” as a synonym for “townie” – see Mystic River (2003), The Departed (2006), Gone Baby Gone[…]
Colonialism · Drama · Exile and Displacement
Sirāt: The Rave That Walked On Mines
Spoiler Warning: This piece discusses all major events in the film. * * * Óliver Laxe’s Sirāt fuses the fear of losing oneself with the trembling topography of the desert;[…]
Animation · Drama · Myth and Archetype · War
Borderwalker: The Homelands of Vinland Saga
We are, each of us, mearcstapas, navigating the borders between lands. Home, in Vinland Saga, extends beyond geopolitics and ancestry. Whenever geographical territories are breached, cultural and personal identities are[…]
Courtroom Drama · Drama · Exile and Displacement · Myth and Archetype
The Two Diops and the Grief Between: Notes on Atlantics and Saint Omer
“They’re not monsters. They’re just tired.” – Ada, Atlantics (2019) “I placed her in the sea so that the sea. . . .” – Laurence, Saint Omer (2022) * *[…]
Performing Perfection: The Perfect Asian Dream Boy in Recent Cinema
Depicted as perfect boyfriends, they model an ideal set of standards for a desirable heterosexual male romantic partner while using those standards not to pursue their own self-interests but rather[…]
African American · Asian · Drama · Essays
On the Dignity of the Successful Man: Akira Kurosawa, Spike Lee, and the “High-Low” Scale
Both films will give the critic searching for a standard class-focused reading a headache. We have to admit that the kidnapper exerts an imposition on the success of “the other.”[…]
Activist & Political · Brazilian Cinema · Communism and Socialism · Drama · Politics
The Comfort of Righteousness: Argentina, 1985 and Ainda Estou Aqui
Retornarán los libros, las canciones que quemaron las manos asesinas. Renacerá mi pueblo de su ruina y pagarán su culpa los traidores. The books will return, the songs burned by[…]
Drama · Drugs · Melodrama · Men & Masculinity
The Paternal Pill and Its Side Effects: The Delusion of Fatherhood in Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life
Due to cortisone overdose, Ed turns into a radical enforcer of outdated values at school. His expectations, rather than aligning with the conventional disciplinary regime of the time, deviate into[…]
What Hides in Plain Sight? Against the Backdrop of Tár
In Tár, Field fashions an improbable representation of power (Hernández, “Top Orchestras”) to advance the idea that power is faceless. But the idea is only to be believed if the[…]
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