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[…]
Category: Genres
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,[…]
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[…]
Activist & Political · Medical · Pandemic
Surviving: A Four-Film Guide to Outlasting Quarantine and Changing the Post-Corona World
Amid senators dumping stock while lying to the public about the true danger of the virus, rumors of Trump seeking to profit from a potential COVID-19 vaccine, the farce of[…]
Activist & Political · Disease and Epidemics
Contagion (2011) in a Time of Contagion
The virus, on screen and off, spreads at a rate that outpaces the economy. Marx would not be surprised that Trump is calling for a return to work since workers[…]
Commentary · Crime · Documentaries · New Media
The Audience of Antagonism: Mark Lewis’ Don’t F**k With Cats
“We are not so much a society where nobody knows anybody as we are a society where only media celebrities are considered to have actual existence.” –[…]
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[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Essays
Lost Dreams of Brazil: Petra Costa’s The Edge of Democracy (2019)
E em cada paso dessa linha / pode se machucar. Azar! / A esperança equilibrista / sabe que o show de todo artista tem que continuar. And on each step[…]
“You Have Only Half the Picture”: Syzygies in Æon Flux
“Revolutionaries need an oppressive establishment to thrive, just as governments need hidden enemies to justify stricture.” – Peter Chung, creator of Æon Flux * * * From 1991 to 1995,[…]
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[…]
Drama · Religion & Spirituality · War
A Canterbury Tale: A Very British Spirituality . . . and European Too
Overt spirituality is often undermined in this film by bizarrely comic episodes from everyday life. Certainly the most bizarre plot element concerns the Glue Man – someone who attacks young[…]
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