Crime · Drama · Family · French Cinema · Linguistics and Language
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
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[…]
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
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 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
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[…]
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[…]
Crime · Directors · Drama · Historical & Epic
The animal is the only genuine thing in man. – Frank Wedekind * * * A woman sits rhythmically rocking by candlelight, her eyes focused on a distant point. Around[…]
Crime · Drama · Historical & Epic · Indigenous · Native Americans
Killers interweaves the Western, film noir, the gangster film, the police procedural, the courtroom drama, and even a bit of horror; however, it jumps between them with often elliptical editing[…]
Books · Crime · Directors · Drama · Franchises & Series · War
Coppola not only lived for his films but also lived in and through them, in a constant process of inventing and reinventing himself both as an artist and as a[…]
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[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Drama · Labor
“There can be no resistance without memory or universalism” – Jean-Luc Godard, In Praise of Love (2001) * * * With his new feature, The Old Oak (2023), Ken Loach[…]
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[…]
Books · Drama · German Cinema · LGBT & Queer · Melodrama
Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors by Ian Penman (Semiotext(e), May 2023, pp. 200, $11.99. * * * In William Motley’s best-selling 1947 novel Knock on Any Door, the author cites an adage that[…]
African · African American · Drama · Essays · Exile and Displacement · Family · Historical & Epic · Race · SF & Fantasy
A think piece discussing the movies Antebellum, Black Panther, Django Unchained, Get Out, and Us. It compares their reception and portrayal of anti-black racism and black suffering, via the lens[…]
Why would writer-director Todd Field make the character so eloquent, cast her with such a beloved actress, and spend so much screen time building pathos for her, all the while[…]
Future events in political campaigns came to be much worse than the events of late 1987 proved to be. One might be inclined to scoff at Gary Hart’s response given[…]
Documentaries · Drama · Family
The fourth wall is broken in the first moments of filming, and the opening scene sets up the dynamic between the filmmaker and the filmed. From there on out, Fredriksson[…]
What makes Judith Hearne such a compelling portrait of female alcoholism is the novel and film’s attention to the many factors that drive Judith’s drinking – the initial encouragement of[…]
