Director/author’s statement: My film Recorded as Stated by Me (V. Shashkov, 2024), released on Amazon Prime at the end of April 2025, is set in post-mobilization Russia and traces cultural[…]
Category: Genres
African American · Asian · Drama · Essays
On the Dignity of the Successful Man: Akira Kurosawa, Spike Lee, and the “High-Low” Scale
Both films will give the critic searching for a standard class-focused reading a headache. We have to admit that the kidnapper exerts an imposition on the success of “the other.”[…]
Activist & Political · Brazilian Cinema · Communism and Socialism · Drama · Politics
The Comfort of Righteousness: Argentina, 1985 and Ainda Estou Aqui
Retornarán los libros, las canciones que quemaron las manos asesinas. Renacerá mi pueblo de su ruina y pagarán su culpa los traidores. The books will return, the songs burned by[…]
Class System · Crime · Hollywood · Noir · Pre-Code
Rocky Died Yellow: Matinee Polemics
When the Production Code loosened and America lurched through assassinations, riots, and televised body bags, the gangster stopped functioning as a moral lesson and started reading as a symptom –[…]
Drama · Drugs · Melodrama · Men & Masculinity
The Paternal Pill and Its Side Effects: The Delusion of Fatherhood in Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life
Due to cortisone overdose, Ed turns into a radical enforcer of outdated values at school. His expectations, rather than aligning with the conventional disciplinary regime of the time, deviate into[…]
Book Review: These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World
These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World, by Grady Hendrix and Chris Poggiali. Revised and expanded paperback edition, Running Press, 2025, 384 pages,[…]
What Hides in Plain Sight? Against the Backdrop of Tár
In Tár, Field fashions an improbable representation of power (Hernández, “Top Orchestras”) to advance the idea that power is faceless. But the idea is only to be believed if the[…]
Drama · Restorations · Satire
Darling, John Schlesinger’s Ever Relevant Relic: The British New Wave Classic Turns Sixty
Who is this minx with the thirty-kilowatt smile? Christie is phenomenal here, creating an archetype of the modern neurotic. The extraordinary geometry of her face, depending on angle and lights,[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Italian Cinema · LGBT & Queer
From Gospel to Grotesque: The Cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pasolini is in the canon – but only as a statue, not a voice. His name appears in film textbooks, his films screen at retrospectives, and Salò gets trotted out[…]
Absurdism · Body Horror · Disease and Epidemics · Family · Horror · Politics
“The Saw Is Family”: The Haunted America of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
When taken as a whole, it’s apparent that Hooper was just as politically minded in the creation of this film as he was with the first, his sights set firmly[…]
Class System · Drama · Exile and Displacement · French Cinema · Road Movies · Women in Film
Jeunes Mères (Young Mothers): Little Women – and Their Babies
For the Dardenne brothers, “social conditions” come down to the common denominator of cold cash – having it, lacking it, getting it, some disposing of it more than others. It’s[…]
Drama · Essays · Feminism · French Cinema · Men & Masculinity · Sex & Relationships · Women in Film
Tango Redux: Complicity
Last Tango in Paris is a case study in how a culture processes shame – who bears it, who survives it, who escapes it entirely. Maria Schneider, long ignored, is[…]
A Poetics of Grief: Relation Through the Lens of Relationship in Celine Song’s Past Lives
In the screenplay for Past Lives, Song’s scene descriptions are acutely sensitive to the way in which identity lives in the distance between self and Other, between knowing and mystery.[…]
Books · Drama · Indies · Women in Film
Book Review: Ida Lupino, Forgotten Auteur: From Film Noir to the Director’s Chair
Alexandra Seros, Ida Lupino, Forgotten Auteur: From Film Noir to the Director’s Chair. Texas University Press, 2024. 227 pages. $45.00. * * * Most readers of this journal recognize Ida[…]
Censorship · Feminism · Gender · Iranian Cinema · Middle East · Muslims · Politics · Revolution · Women in Film
A History and a Film: On My Favorite Cake (Iran, 2024)
The woman without a hijab in her private space, something consistently denied visual existence, is no longer hidden or censored. Instead, her presence is centered and made ordinary. In this[…]
Drama · Interior Monologue · LGBT & Queer · Men & Masculinity
Giving up the Ghost: A Meditation on All of Us Strangers
The song continues to play as the camera moves farther and farther away from the spooning lovers and higher and higher into the night sky that cradles them. Having proceeded[…]
Essays · LGBT & Queer · Politics · Romance · Russia
Collective Subjects and Soviet Subjectivities: The Counterplan, A Severe Young Man, and the Paradoxes of Socialist Realism
“The history of ideas is the history of the spite of certain solitaries.” – E. M. Cioran, All Gall Is Divided * * * It was at the 1934 First[…]
Directors · Drama · French Cinema · Nouvelle Vague
Games of Logic and Longing: The Quiet Radicalism of Éric Rohmer
In an age of clickbait politics and algorithmic attention spans, there’s something quietly revolutionary about refusing to manufacture drama. Rohmer’s refusal to manipulate emotion – to cue violins or insert[…]
Brat Facts: Why St. Elmo’s Fire (1985) Still Attracts an Audience After 40 Years of Bad Reviews
For anyone who was coming of age during the eighties, St. Elmo’s represented the height of hubris. It represented the height of yuppiedom and suburban sprawl. It represented the height[…]
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