As it stands, Suture’s bold attempt at cultural effacement never drives home any type of allegory, just as Clay is only a passenger in a narrative with barely any causal[…]
Category: Genres
Essays · Thrillers & Action · Urban Conflict · Women in Film
Welcome to the Ranks of the Disenchanted: Feminism and Pacifist Spectacle in The Gauntlet
This essay is a revised version of a book chapter that originally appeared in the anthology Clint Eastwood’s Cinema of Trauma: Essays on PTSD in the Director’s Films, eds., Charles[…]
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[…]
Horror · Mystery · SF & Fantasy · Westerns
The Self as Other: Unknown Identities in John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (2015)
The Thing and The Hateful Eight’s analogous narratives speak to broader philosophical notions of selfhood and knowledge of others. Their thematic undercurrents explore the forever-complicated terrain of what it means[…]
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[…]
Weird American Odysseys: Music, Authenticity, and the Coen Brothers
“When somebody’s wearing a mask, he’s going to tell the truth. When he’s not wearing a mask, it’s highly unlikely.” – Bob Dylan (while not wearing a mask), Rolling Thunder[…]
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[…]
Animation · Essays · Women in Film
Girls Just Wanna Be Fish: The Little Mermaid and Curious Young Women
Author’s note: My primary works cited, in increasingly tangled order, are the 1989 Disney adaptation of The Little Mermaid; Hayao Miyazaki’s 2008 Studio Ghibli film Ponyo; and the ur-terror that[…]
Experimental & Underground · Festivals & Awards
Rose Is a Rose: The 2020 International Short Film Festival Oberhausen
Watching as a FIPRESCI festival juror from Australia, at all hours of night and day, I was overwhelmed by the breadth of the international program, with its dizzying, often undifferentiated,[…]
Activist & Political · Disease and Epidemics · Economy · Horror · Pandemic
“Don’t Let It Touch You”: Watching It Follows in the Age of Coronavirus
What the decade’s scariest film can tell us about pandemics, poverty, and the web of financial risk that ensnares us all * * * It comes for you when you’re[…]
Horror · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
The Thing about The Thing and Some Other Things
It’s your thing, do what you wanna do, I can’t tell you who to sock it to. – Isley Brothers What in the thing is thingly? What is the thing[…]
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[…]
Comedy · Film Technology & History · Franchises & Series · Theory
The Phenomenology of the Grotesque: Jackass 3D’s Cinema of Stereoscopic Attractions
Stereoscopic experience, therefore, drastically alters the positioning of the viewer in relation to diegetic content, creating the illusion that the body of the spectator is immersed within the screen planes[…]
Hollywood · Literature and Film · Production History · Writers & Critics
The Cinematic Faulkner: Framing Hollywood
“The Cinematic Faulkner” includes excerpts from The Life of William Faulkner, Volume 1: The Past Is Never Dead 1897-1934 (March 2020) and Volume 2: This Alarming Paradox 1935-1962 (September 2020), with the permission of the University[…]
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,[…]
Links + BSA
