Of Parasites and Their Hosts: Bong Joon-ho’s Gisaengchung (2019)
One of the ways in which Parasite differs from many more naturalistic movies about urban poverty is that access to mediated experience is shown to be a function of opportunity[…]
Category: Genres
Activist & Political · Essays · Philosophy
Once Upon a Time – Shots in the Hyperreal (on Tarantino’s New Film)
“Hey, you’re Rick fucking Dalton. Don’t you forget it.” – Once Upon a Time – in Hollywood “And so art is everywhere, since artifice is at the very heart of reality.”[…]
Franchises & Series · Superheroes
Joker: Sympathy Epic
“It’s there all the time, driving me out to wander the streets, following me, silently, but I can feel it there. It’s me, pursuing myself. . . . But who[…]
Dispatches #2 and #3 from Doc NYC: Mr. Toilet: The World’s #2 Man and We Believe in Dinosaurs
This is the second (and third) in a series of reviews by our New York correspondent Claire Baiz of entries in this year’s Doc NYC, the Big Apple’s – and one[…]
Franchises & Series · Superheroes
Lesser Expectations: Joker and Classical Hollywood Cinema
Phoenix’s body is mostly skin and bones, which is ironic since the film attempts to flesh out the Joker. In fact, this Joker’s ribs and shoulder blades seem to be[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · War
Dispatch #1 from 2019 Doc NYC: Barbara Kopple’s Desert One
This is the first in a series of reviews by our New York correspondent Claire Baiz of entries in this year’s Doc NYC, the Big Apple’s – and one of[…]
Eastern European · Festivals & Awards
Ready for the Close-up: Filmmaking Then and Now in the Baltic States
Note: We’re publishing this to coincide with New York’s Scandinavia House’s important second festival devoted to Baltic cinema. * * * Introduction The second New York Baltic Film Festival will[…]
Comedy · Counterculture · Drama · Sex & Relationships
Who Carries the Banner? Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice 50 Years Later
Concepts of sex and marriage have changed monumentally in the last few decades and still today prove endlessly malleable and undefinable. We spend our whole lives attempting to shape our[…]
Drama · New Media · Philosophy
Videograms of a Revolution: Surveillance, Self-Regulation, and Techno-Progressivism in M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass (2019)
[This review contains spoilers for the films Glass and The Village.] “There are unknown forces that don’t want us to realise what we are truly capable of. They don’t[…]
Asian · Drama · LGBT & Queer
“This Film Is Blessed by the Gods”: Talking with Mag Hsu, Director of Dear Ex (Netflix, 2018)
Hsu Chih-Yen and I immediately agreed that we wanted to represent a Taipei in July, especially the sun in Taipei. Under this July sun, everything is steaming, all the colours[…]
Essays · Historical & Epic · Memoir · SF & Fantasy
The Wizard of Oz at 80: Archive of a Rust Belt Girl
The Wizard of Oz, the film, turns 80 this year, 2019. To celebrate, we present Amy Kenyon’s striking analysis/memoir, which explores growing up a “rust belt girl” in postwar Detroit[…]
Crime · Neo-Noir · Writers & Critics
8 Million Ways to Die (1986): An Autopsy of the Great L.A. Noir That Never Was
So what the fuck happened? * * * 8 Million Ways to Die is a mess. Not a glorious mess, or an interesting mess. It’s not a fiasco on the[…]
On the Beautiful Pain of Saying Nothing: Desire, Silence, and Visual Inheritance in Pawlikowski’s Cold War and Antonioni’s L’Eclisse
“We’ve avoided saying certain things. Why bring them up now?” – L’Eclisse “Two hearts, four eyes, Crying all day and all night/ Dark eyes, you cry because you can’t be[…]
Time and Friendship in Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, 2006), or How We Age with Film
The film withholds memory and history from us, always knowing more than us, plot-wise, but inviting and compelling our projection of how we fill the space of our own friendships.[…]
The Architecture of Horror: Space, Light, and Atmosphere in Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar
We encounter filmic atmosphere vaguely, imperceptibly, but emotively and reflexively; a movie is a mood. Hereditary and Midsommar creep into our consciousness through subtle shifts in light, sound, and camerawork.[…]
DVD & Blu-ray · Historical & Epic · Reviews
“Tolstoy and Only Tolstoy. Nothing Comes from Us”: Sergei Bondarchuk’s War and Peace (1966-67) – Criterion Update
“What do such large loose baggy monsters, with their queer elements of the accidental and the arbitrary, artistically mean?” – Henry James, from the preface of his novel The Tragic[…]
Orpheus Unending, or Beyond and Behind The Fugitive Kind
For a variety of reasons, then, despite its high-gloss finish, the film did not achieve any real commercial success. This is not to say it was an artistic letdown, as[…]
The Lion King (2019): The Art of De-Animation
These characters speak lines that contain emotion but show none of it themselves, even when they’re the exact same lines as before. And when they’re new, they show no old[…]
Animation · LGBT & Queer · Memoir
Filmography of the Closet: Coming Out through The Little Mermaid
As a child, singing the Ariel aahs was synonymous for me with being or becoming Ariel. More than looking like her, dressing like her, acting like her – all of[…]
African American · Cinematographers · Designers · Editors · Interviews
The Last Black Man in San Francisco: Talking with Production Designer Jona Tochet, Cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra, and Editor David Marks
We spent a lot of time going through references for the film as well as scouting iconic locations, but what it came down to was devoting ourselves to creating a[…]
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