This leaves the provocateur director herself in her role as catalyst for the mayhem to follow as the ultimate filmic presence wreaking its influence on others. Assigned only the title[…]
Category: Drama
Directors · Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · Westerns
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: Revisiting Sam Peckinpah’s Unrealized Western on Criterion
Action scenes are what a summer audience wants, but in Pat Garrett the shootouts become episodic and lack the ratcheting up of tension, followed by its release at the climactic[…]
Drama · French Cinema · Uncategorized · Writers & Critics
Bresson, Schrader, and the Fool: Transcendental and Materialist Interpretations in the Films of Robert Bresson
I think the reason Bresson’s films resist singular interpretations is that they are composed of multiple, overlapping perspectives. His films contain elements of humanism, nihilism, absurdism, existentialism, transcendentalism, and numerous[…]
Crime · Drama · Neo-Noir · Women in Film
“Oh, look”: From Male-Wary Gaze to Objectifying Female Gaze in Gone Girl
“Oh, look. He’s being a good guy, so everybody can see him being a good guy.” – Officer James Gilpin observing Nick Dunne in Gone Girl (2014) There are many[…]
Drama · Politics · Thrillers & Action
The Imperial Presidency after Trump v. United States: On the 30th Anniversary of Clear and Present Danger
On its 30th anniversary, it also feels remarkably relevant in the wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling that presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for exercising “core” executive[…]
Comedy · Drama · Interviews · Picaresque · Producers & Studios
The Sweet East’s Online Odyssey: In Conversation with Palme d’Or-Winning Producer Alex Coco
A conversation with Palme d’Or-winning producer Alex Coco * * * In Sean Price William’s The Sweet East, we are told “Everything Will Happen,” which may be a warning to[…]
Good Grief: Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers
“Solving” the film’s psychological mysteries – understanding how Adam’s ghosts arise from his grief – is the film’s central interpretive demand, and one of its pleasures. It’s the film’s conclusion[…]
Drama · Eco · Games & Gaming · Literature and Film · SF & Fantasy · War
Villeneuve’s Dune, Warhammer 40K, and the Next Frontier of Space Operas
The everyday hero is a foreign concept in a universe where obscure machinations corrode a society that blindly follows in the hopes of stability and lasting glory. * * *[…]
Drama · Eco · Eco-horror · Horror · Urban Conflict
Garbageman: C.H.U.D. at 40
On the face of it, C.H.U.D. might look like a superficial protest against this schema – like a trite version of David and Goliath wherein the tenacity of a neighbourhood[…]
Actors & Personalities · Books · Drama
Book Review: Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By Philip Gefter
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By Philip Gefter. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024. $42.00 * * * I love “making of”[…]
Drama · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
On 2001: A Space Odyssey: The Monolith and Its Influences
In this new reading of 2001, the monolith is used as a touchstone for considering a dozen tangents into iconoclastic cinema, the human and simian response to enigma, and the[…]
Biopic · Drama · Men & Masculinity · Military and Paramilitary
Confessions of a Masc: On Paul Schrader’s Mishima
Words, and the internal fictions they represented, would never be enough to join Mishima’s corporeal self to the abstract notion of beauty except in a dreamlike capacity, which would not[…]
Crime · Drama · Family · French Cinema · Linguistics and Language
Anatomy of a Fall and the Expatriate’s Predicament
Daniel is presented as a talented pianist, with an intellect of one well beyond his years. He is both strong-willed and sensitive. He is affectionate with his mother, yet culturally[…]
Asian · Drama · Experimental & Underground
Auto-Focus: Reflexivity, Autocritique, and Formal Experimentation in Hong Sang-soo’s In Water (2023)
The reflexive nature of Hong’s formalism, in which stylistic decisions call attention to themselves and point to the mediating presence of the man behind the camera, makes it problematic to[…]
Book Review: Terrence Malick and the Examined Life, by Martin Woessner. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024. $65.00
Malick, in other words, is a director who established himself during the transition from Old Hollywood to New Hollywood, where experimenting became the norm, and it is while experimenting at[…]
Drama · Historical & Epic · Holocaust
The Air We Breathe: Ecology and Atmosphere in The Zone of Interest (2023)
If the choking of the camp victims is muffled in the film, it is darkly recapitulated in the sputtering coughs that spread through the family, from Höss to Hedwig’s mother.[…]
Absurdism · Cityscapes · Drama · Literature and Film · Writers & Critics
Cosmopolis: A DeLillo–Cronenberg Mutation
Cosmopolis reflects the experience of a cancer patient, housed within a corporatized institution, dependent on the biases and whims of authorities, machines, and data. The book and film, poorly reviewed[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Essays · Romance
Gazing at Gary Cooper: Sex, Power, Gender, and the Body in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), Ball of Fire (1941), and Love in the Afternoon (1957)
As with Monroe, his seemingly all-but-transparent method has proven remarkably difficult to emulate, much less duplicate. (Toles, 2003: 34) Whatever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type? That was[…]
Horror Held in Sunbeams Along the Garden Wall: On The Zone of Interest and the Mundanity of Preservation
Sunbeams, radiant and warm. Human bodies, young and old. And who are imprisoned here, our hearts are yet not cold. We who are imprisoned here, are wakeful as the stars[…]
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