Class System · Essays · Historical & Epic · Immigrant Experience
The house was never ours. It was the Marryots’ house, and the Bridges served it. It was England’s house, and the Irish lived in it under conditions that were[…]
There’s a different, far more potent layer to this film; one actually relevant to most, if not all, people watching. It hinges on a question Caleb asks Ava’s creator after[…]
The world is human and non-human, anthropocentric and non-anthropomorphic, sometimes even misanthropic. Arguably, one of the greatest challenges that philosophy faces today lies in comprehending the world in which we[…]
This essay attempts to map a “haptic geography” of contemporary cinema, exploring how directors like Christopher Nolan, Bong Joon-ho, Denis Villeneuve, Paul Thomas Anderson, Céline Sciamma, Charlotte Wells, and Yorgos[…]
When we speak of union with the beloved, do we mean purification of the self alongside another, or the annihilation of the self under the guise of love? If union[…]
Drama · Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Nazism · Splatter & Gore · War
Forgotten and derided Nazisploitation movies expose the lost power of trash cinema and put today’s neutered McMovies to shame. * * * Of all the overused movie clichés, the inescapable[…]
Conspiracies · Drama · SF & Fantasy
Knowledge is no longer public – it is in the hands of private companies, access conditional, sharing selective. And like everything that is privatized, what belongs to everyone does not[…]
Costume Drama · Drama · Essays · Mystery · Psychology · Thrillers & Action
Like the subtle differences of someone else’s cleaning efforts, our past is inescapable. A seemingly small choice can have myriad consequences, and this is what Kubrick is on about in[…]
Directors · Satire · Scandinavian Cinema
Our prevailing moviemaking ethos calls for emotion to be tempered through a kind of ebb and flow structure, for an emotion to be slowly built toward and quickly moved away[…]
Counterculture · Profiles · Writers & Critics
Judging from the total lack of information on screenwriter Adrien Joyce (Carole Eastman), Academy Award nominee for her original story and screenplay of Five Easy Pieces, I could have concluded[…]
Artists · Sex & Relationships · TV & Streaming · TV series
“Even without him, it’s still about him.” * * * Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi calls his series The Show About the Show (2015 – 2025) radically honest. Arguably, he pays the[…]
Drama · Essays · SF & Fantasy
Perhaps this is a fantasy. Perhaps this is the father as imagined, not as experienced. Perhaps this is what the students receive, and what the son never did. And so,[…]
Biopic · Historical & Epic · Romance · Shakespeare
Whereas Hamnet tugs at a few well-worn heartstrings to make us weep, Shakespeare in Love opens out onto a whole new world, stretching our imaginations to other times and places.[…]
Cinematographers · Erotica · Photographers
Cinematographers usually frame influence through cinema and painting – Vittorio Storaro citing Caravaggio, Roger Deakins invoking Johannes Vermeer, Conrad Hall recreating Edward Hopper’s lonesome framing – yet many of the compositional systems they use today were first stabilized[…]
Artificial Intelligence (AI) · Dystopia · SF & Fantasy
Fiery the angels fell; deep thunder rolled around their shores; burning with the fires of Orc. – Roy Batty, paraphrasing William Blake * * * Los Angeles, November, 2019 Dark[…]
When everything is shown, little is felt. * * * Cinema has always been described through movement – of images, of time, of bodies across space. Yet what if its[…]
Comedy · Drama · Family · French Cinema
As a film within the evolving Klapisch oeuvre, what La Venue de l’Avenir (2025) looks forward toward remains, of course, to be seen. As a capstone at this point in[…]
Hollywood · Music & Musicals · Pre-Code
An essay excerpted from the new edition of Persistence of Vision: A Collection of Film Criticism, edited by Joseph McBride, 2026. Originally published in 1968 by the Wisconsin Film Society[…]
Comedy · Military and Paramilitary · Nazism · Satire · War
Chaplin is not merely parodying how a dictator sounds. He is anatomizing how fascism recruits, extracts, degrades, appropriates, scapegoats, and lies. * * * Charlie Chaplin’s opening Hynkel speech in[…]
Counterculture · Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Fairy Tale · Indies · Sex & Relationships
Even in the age of reevaluation, Borowczyk remains a problem critics would rather sidestep than solve. His films don’t fit the revival mold. They can’t be easily slotted into “elevated”[…]
