Drama · Melodrama · Pre-Code · Romance · War
James Whale’s Waterloo Bridge (1931) and Frank Borzage’s Little Man, What Now? (1934) depict human possibility in terms of what can transpire between two ordinary people, while holding out little[…]
Drama · Women in Film · Workplace
The dull humdrum of the office takes on a kind of bizarre poetry: you find yourself humming along to the copier, placing kitchen objects in patterned formations, making slightly stranger,[…]
Drama · Literature and Film · Russia · SF & Fantasy
While there can be no doubt Solyaris is no artistic masterpiece, the idea that it isn’t a product of its time is more complicated. To the extent that the film[…]
Edward is never really accepted for who he is by those around him, the persecution he is subjected to the result of a communal, warped worldview and individual biases, ranging[…]
With Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma offers us an unexpectedly timely commentary on our present moment of social distancing, self-quarantines, and curfews. This film about cooped-up lovers,[…]
Celebrity Culture · Drama · Essays
While Rupert isn’t interested in a crisscross murder, he certainly wants Jerry to spot him a segment on Jerry’s show. This is more than a favor..And he appears to go[…]
In Joker, we see a reversal of Tarantino’s aesthetic, where a patently comic character, a joker with a clown face, is, by degrees, rendered tragic, or as near tragic as[…]
Drama · Religion & Spirituality · War
Overt spirituality is often undermined in this film by bizarrely comic episodes from everyday life. Certainly the most bizarre plot element concerns the Glue Man – someone who attacks young[…]
Drama · Essays · Women in Film
Show me one who loves; he knows what I mean. – St. Augustine * * * I’m sharing my favorite places with her outside my alma mater: bald, rolling fields[…]
Designers · Drama · Interviews
We were really careful in coming up with the look of Howard’s world to make assumptions about how old he was when he would’ve formed his taste, and what that[…]
Drama · Essays · Urban Conflict
Our nation has persisted in this state for so long that when we watch Taxi Driver, we always watch it with John Hinckley. It is a film that forces us[…]
Drama · LGBT & Queer · Russia
My point here isn’t to suggest that Gorchilin and Pecheykin are government lackeys bent on pleasing Vladimir Putin. They’re young filmmakers working in a totalitarian country and have constraints that[…]
In striving toward “that level of being real,” Burstyn handpicked much of the film’s eventual cast from her Actors Studio cohort – a decision that meshed well with both Scorsese’s[…]
One of the ways in which Parasite differs from many more naturalistic movies about urban poverty is that access to mediated experience is shown to be a function of opportunity[…]
Comedy · Counterculture · Drama · Sex & Relationships
Concepts of sex and marriage have changed monumentally in the last few decades and still today prove endlessly malleable and undefinable. We spend our whole lives attempting to shape our[…]
Drama · New Media · Philosophy
[This review contains spoilers for the films Glass and The Village.] “There are unknown forces that don’t want us to realise what we are truly capable of. They don’t[…]
Asian · Drama · LGBT & Queer
Hsu Chih-Yen and I immediately agreed that we wanted to represent a Taipei in July, especially the sun in Taipei. Under this July sun, everything is steaming, all the colours[…]
“We’ve avoided saying certain things. Why bring them up now?” – L’Eclisse “Two hearts, four eyes, Crying all day and all night/ Dark eyes, you cry because you can’t be[…]
The film withholds memory and history from us, always knowing more than us, plot-wise, but inviting and compelling our projection of how we fill the space of our own friendships.[…]
For a variety of reasons, then, despite its high-gloss finish, the film did not achieve any real commercial success. This is not to say it was an artistic letdown, as[…]
