The Birds, the Birds, and the Beatles
One of the delights of running a film review website is being able to repost an article just because we feel like it. Admittedly, we have many to choose from[…]
Category: Genres
Drama · Essays · Film Crews · Hollywood · News · Production · Production History · Stuntwork
The Silver Screen Is Rusting: Why Rust Can’t Happen Again
Even if Rust is defined as professional by its crew, the danger that allows a crew member to die cannot coexist with the description of professional. If that is professional,[…]
The Body Embarrassed: “Cringing” as Empathetic Response to American Beauty and The Talented Mr. Ripley
As American Beauty deals with visualized and thematic pleasure by giving us “beauty” in both sexualized and desexualized forms, and Ripley makes us feel like a voyeur alongside its protagonist[…]
Drama · Historical & Epic · War · Women in Film
The Feminist Undercurrents of The Brutalist: Women as the Backbone of Power and Legacy
In contrast to the patriarchal norms that dominate “American” family values, The Brutalist quietly insists on the indispensable role of women in guiding not just familial stability but broader legacies[…]
African American · Class System · Colonialism · Exile and Displacement · Historical & Epic · Horror · Race · Religion & Spirituality
The Price of Being Let In: Sinners and the Lie of Liberation
From the erasure of Native knowledge to the internal hierarchies among the oppressed, from religion’s double edge to the seduction of assimilation, Coogler’s film maps the mechanisms of survival within[…]
Covid-19 · Disease and Epidemics · Men & Masculinity · Military and Paramilitary · Pandemic · SF & Fantasy
Life Is Wonderful: Double Apocalypse and Redemption in Virus: Day of Resurrection (1980)
As a single-minded seismologist posted in Antarctica who predicts the disastrous DC quake, Yoshizumi embodies the willful blindness and debasement of humans in the Cold War era: like those who[…]
Comedy · Directors · Indies · Interviews · Thrillers & Action
Joel Potrykus talks Vulcanizadora, Being “Really Immature,” and What He Thinks Hell Is Like
I love it when someone just absolutely shoves the vision down your throat. * * * Vulcanizadora, Joel Potrykus’ fifth feature film, hit the festival circuit last spring with a[…]
Class System · Documentaries · Drama · Eco
Class, Capitalism, and Freedom: Connecting Jorge Furtado’s Ilha das Flores and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite
At first glance, Ilha das Flores and Parasite, separated by thirty years, appear to have little in common. Despite their many surface-level differences, however, they bear striking similarities. Both are[…]
Psychology · Religion & Spirituality · SF & Fantasy
Salvation from the Skies: Carl Jung Watches The Day the Earth Stood Still
In the same way that reading Jung can provide insight into The Day the Earth Stood Still, it is also the case that watching the movie can illuminate aspects of[…]
The Myth of Los Angeles’ (Fiery) Destruction and the People Who Tell a Different Story: From Souls for Sale (1923) to Model Shop (1969)
You need the virus to build the antidote, and so it should come as no surprise that movies made in Los Angeles are among the most powerful remedies to the[…]
“Look Closer”: The Life Behind American Beauty
“Death is the mother of beauty.” – Wallace Stevens “I choose the ugly as well as the beautiful, knowing it will all be beautiful soon enough.” – Marvin Bell *[…]
Directors · Drama · Religion & Spirituality
The Secret of Creativity: The Inspirations of Paul Schrader’s First Reformed
“That’s the secret of creativity. You have to steal around. If you keep going back to that same 7-Eleven, they’re going to catch you. So you go over to the[…]
Day of the Dead, a Woman’s Nightmare, and Post-Capitalist Possibilities
Instead of a shape-shifting alien that overtakes its human hosts, capitalism is represented in Romero’s film by the military and to a lesser extent, the zombies. Zombies have long been[…]
On Electrocuting an Elephant and Animal Death in Film
The death of the animal allows for an altering of the visual dynamic that is often inaccessible through traditional mechanisms of film, and, through harnessing and disrupting the tenuous balance[…]
Last Play: All of the Surviving Footage of the Beatles’ February 10, 1967 “A Day in the Life” Session
We watch, and it feels like anything could happen at a session that doubled as once-in-a-zeitgeist party, with Beatles, a host of rock luminaries – Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Donovan,[…]
Directors · Essays · Experimental & Underground · French Cinema
Forever Alex: Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me (C’est pas moi, 2024)
Carax suggests that the constant availability of images as immaterial streams – reduced to binary code and accessible through handheld devices – has diminished their impact. One of the film’s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Westerns · Women in Film
Tea in Monument Valley: On Vera Miles and The Searchers
An excerpt from Vera Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away, to be released March 25 by University Press of Kentucky, exploring Miles’s impressive career and her relationships with the[…]
Leaving Las Vegas Turns 30: A Savior-Less Portrait of Liquor-Soaked Love and Despair Not for the Faint of Heart
“I don’t know if I started drinking ‘cause my wife left me or my wife left me ‘cause I started drinking but fuck it anyway.” – Ben Sanderson, Leaving Las[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Essays
In Magnolia, Tom Cruise Far Outperformed Real-Life Andrew Tate
Cruise’s performance as Mackey offers a unique opportunity to make sense of a Tate, and to see what all really lies right under the surface of this ongoing phenomenon. *[…]
Aging · Class System · Drama · Hollywood
The Right Picture: Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow, the So-Called Most Depressing Movie of All Time
We are grateful that Bark and Lucy and what they represent are able to exist. That such people have gone before, even if it meant going before in a work[…]
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