Drama · Horror · Women in Film
The Birds Is Us: Where Did We Come From?
The movie is, literally, a projection of our mental landscape. We passively sit back (like Jeffries in Rear Window) and the world appears as we live and make it. We[…]
Category: Drama
Positive Freedoms in a Negative Space: Revisiting Mädchen in Uniform
From these socio-erotic negotiations sprung cinema’s first expressly lesbian-themed feature, Mädchen in Uniform (1931), not simply a tale of forbidden love but a historically particular challenge to Weimar Germany’s separation[…]
Drama · Essays · Urban Conflict
Fighting for a Place to Be: Urban Space in Tangerine and The Florida Project
This conditional access to space is also there in Tangerine, but it is never tested to the breaking point. The conflicts that occur between the characters and the managers of[…]
#MeToo · Activist & Political · Drama · Women in Film · Workplace
#MeToo in Three Recent Films: The Assistant, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, and On the Record
#MeToo has been an unequivocal success in terms of calling out the rampant sexual abuse that exists in the veins of Hollywood, but has been less successful in allowing room[…]
Directors · Drama · Interviews
On Driveways and Spa Night: Talking with Director Andrew Ahn
“I try very hard to give the characters in my films a sense of humanity. I want this feeling for the audience that these characters exist outside of the frame.[…]
Drama · Interior Monologue · Letters
Just a Violet: On Gillian Armstrong’s Mrs. Soffel
(interpolating material by Paul Simon, John Sebastian, Johnny Jewel, Johnny Mercer, Emily Jane Meluch, Conor Oberst, Jaret Ray Reddick, and Eddie Argos) * * * The weight of the world[…]
Drama · Historical & Epic · SF & Fantasy · TV & Streaming
A Song of Ire: Game of Thrones, A Year Later
It is a fascinating exercise to consume this show according to the twenty-first-century rules of binge-watching. As the hours pass and the on-screen death count rises, the sustained passivity of[…]
Absurdism · Comedy · Drama · Eastern European · Horror
The Cremator (1969): In Love with Death
The Cremator, only Juraj Herz’s second film, was adapted from a novel by Ladislav Fuks. It was well received, won a few awards, and was promptly banned for two decades[…]
Drama · Fashion · Noir · Women in Film
“Put the Blame on Mame”: Fragmentation and Commodification in Gilda
The fact that even if that zipper did come down it would simply reveal more dress, a never-ending vortex of clasps and corsets leading to nowhere, seems precisely what the[…]
Drama · Historical & Epic · Women in Film
The Natural Deconstruction of Entrapment: The Beguiled
Where Siegel goes sleazy and conflictual, Coppola goes subtle and sympathetic. Her direction (which won her the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival, making her only the second[…]
Cityscapes · Counterculture · Directors · Drama · Sex & Relationships
Jacques Demy’s Model Shop (1969): The “Baroque Geometry” of Los Angeles in the 1960s
“I reckon LA as the noisiest, the smelliest, the most uncomfortable and most uncivilized major city in the United States. In short, a stinking sewer. . . .”1 – Adam[…]
Activist & Political · Asian · Drama · Societal Trends
Melting into Air: The Late Hu Bo and the (Enduring) Sixth Generation
Hu Bo leaves us suspended over this bleak interregnum – where the old has gone but the new is not yet born. His death too, leaves a similar blank spot.[…]
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[…]
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[…]
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