Activist & Political · Animation
The Hole in Moana’s Heart
What the movie gets wrong is at the story’s heart: not the goddess Te Fiti’s, but the human heart. People, not gods, were the cause of environmental devastation on Pacific[…]
Category: Genres
What Makes Them So Successful? A Look into the Philosophy Behind the Coens’ Filmography
The truth is that they tend toward philosophical absurdism, rather than nihilism, and this perspective is what either makes or breaks their film in terms of commercial appeal. The draw,[…]
Activist & Political · Asian · Directors · Interviews
Challenging the Censor: An Interview with Indian Political Documentarian Rakesh Sharma
“India has always assigned a special sort of power to film . . . an extraordinary power to corrupt gullible masses has been given to cinema.” – Rakesh Sharma *[…]
Activist & Political · Books · Horror
Book Review: Films of the New French Extremity: Visceral Horror and National Identity
By the mid-2000s, following social unrest and political upheaval in France, and culminating with the emergence of the “torture-porn” horror subgenre in the United States with titles such as Saw[…]
Activist & Political · Crime · Essays
Lords of Nothing: Hell or High Water (2016)
“Hey, buddy. We’re exactly the same. What’s happening to these people happened to my ancestors, and it happened to your ancestors.” – Alberto to Marcus in Hell or High Water,[…]
Directors · Film Technology & History · SF & Fantasy
George Lucas’s Wildest Vision: Retrofuturist Auteurism in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
The very foundation of Lucas’s cinematic philosophy is newness – this comes through in his obsession with technological possibilities, and through his genuinely childlike pursuit of spectacle and wonder. His[…]
The Crazy World of His Girl Friday (1940)
His Girl Friday’s headlong pace feels like that of modern life, and its rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue calls to mind our modern media babble, with innumerable people around the globe and[…]
African · Experimental & Underground
Waiting for Cinema: Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Naked Reality (2016)
Bekolo’s cinema is not just “African,” or postcolonial, or experimental, or narrative. It is also a cinema that constantly searches for itself, for what it is and what it can accomplish.[…]
Experimental & Underground · Festivals & Awards
Making Waves: Wavelengths at the Toronto International Film Festival (September 8-18, 2016)
With so many films being made – many of which will never receive wide distribution – how do you navigate the glut of movies at a whopper like Toronto? *[…]
Essays · Horror · Religion & Spirituality
You Say You Want a Revolution? Regan’s Head and The Exorcist
If the evil spirit is “seen,” that is, reflected . . . he is overcome. – Marie-Louise von Franz Unmask Satan, and you vanquish him. – St. Augustine * *[…]
The Propagation of Empathy, the Absence of Bathos: On Alexander Payne’s Sideways (2004)
Regret is perhaps Payne’s greatest theme. The continual human dramedy, the elegiac comedy, a country full of people with limited potential raised to think everyone is special, confined souls struggling[…]
A Legacy of Hope: Andrzej Wajda, 1926-2016
He studied and documented his country’s history, politics, and national myths in both film and theater, and was a beloved mentor to countless young filmmakers. * * * Andrzej Wajda[…]
Experimenting with the Horrific: A Reappraisal and Retrospective of the Films of Tobe Hooper
Hooper’s interest in horror articulates itself primarily in formal invention: how can the frame be used to incapacitate viewer expectations? * * * Tobe Hooper’s most recent feature film, Djinn[…]
African American · Crime · Documentaries
Black Lives Matter: Whitewashing the Amanda Knox Story in the Netflix Documentary
By ignoring the black lives involved, the new Netflix documentary Amanda Knox (premiering on Netflix on September 30) is not only a very white film, it ends up producing its own miscarriage of[…]
The Trouble with Scottie (on Vertigo)
I have yet to encounter anybody who feels my fierce outrage at Scottie’s unfairness toward the necklace. That object is all-important, not because it is the vital clue to the Madeleine-is-Judy[…]
Comedy · Directors · Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · Silents
Two from Flicker Alley: Isn’t Life Wonderful (Griffith, 1924) and Chaplin’s Essanay Comedies, 1915-16
From his very beginnings as a filmmaker, Griffith understood the efficacy of location shooting. Putting actors into real landscapes and streets not only went to authenticating the narrative but had[…]
On Café Society and Woody Allen – Last seen in search of lost innocence, and rich wood paneling!
Art doesn’t have to be autobiographical, does it? Woody can write about the kid he wasn’t as well as the kid he was, can’t he? * * * I haven’t[…]
Don’t Breathe, Just Keep on Surviving
What I have identified is a recurrent depiction of American citizens committing acts of extreme violence against one another, almost always in service of financial interest. * * * Watched[…]
The Horror of a Nation’s Despair: Rob Zombie’s 31 (2016)
Much like the serial-killer-themed amusement park ride in House of 1000 Corpses, 31 is a fast and hyper-sensory excursion into a nation’s sickest and bleakest fixations. * * * Rob[…]
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith: George Lucas’s Greatest Artistic Statement?
Never one to divide “high” art from “low,” Lucas draws from every available well of visual representation to craft this uniquely digital genre entertainment, a film that is broadly drawn[…]
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