Psycho as Comedy: The Joke’s on Everyone
We can further associate the filmmaker, the man with whom we’ve placed our narrative trust, with the “psycho” of both the title and our typical image of one, the latter[…]
Category: Drama
Drama · Melodrama · Pre-Code · Romance · War
Love Stories in Harrowing Times: On Waterloo Bridge (1931) and Little Man, What Now? (1934)
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
Silence and the Loss of Self: On Kitty Green’s The Assistant (2019)
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
Intimately Alien: Conflicting Ideologies in Solyaris (1968) and Solaris (1972)
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[…]
I Won’t Hurt You: Edward Scissorhands’ Lessons in Compassion
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[…]
Portrait without a Face: Faces and Facelessness in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire
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
Doubles, Anyone? Celebrity Stalking in Strangers on a Train and The King of Comedy
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[…]
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Joker: Laughter Without an Echo Chamber
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
A Canterbury Tale: A Very British Spirituality . . . and European Too
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
The Love That Needs to Be, Needs to Be: David O. Selznick’s Portrait of Jennie
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
Uncut Gems: Talking with Production Designer Sam Lisenco
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
Watching Taxi Driver with John Hinckley
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
Alexander Gorchilin’s Acid (2018): Putin-Friendly Arthouse
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[…]
Monterey Dreamin’: 45 Years of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
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[…]
Of Parasites and Their Hosts: Bong Joon-ho’s Gisaengchung (2019)
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
Who Carries the Banner? Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice 50 Years Later
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
Videograms of a Revolution: Surveillance, Self-Regulation, and Techno-Progressivism in M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass (2019)
[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
“This Film Is Blessed by the Gods”: Talking with Mag Hsu, Director of Dear Ex (Netflix, 2018)
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[…]
On the Beautiful Pain of Saying Nothing: Desire, Silence, and Visual Inheritance in Pawlikowski’s Cold War and Antonioni’s L’Eclisse
“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[…]
Time and Friendship in Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, 2006), or How We Age with Film
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.[…]
