If You Can See It: Elvis, Scorsese, and Will Mossop
It’s in Hobson’s Choice that De Banzie and Mills effect one of the warmest and most real accounts of love and marriage ever put on film. Of many effortlessly achieved[…]
Category: Genres
Perfect Tuesdays: How Wim Wenders Taught Me It’s Wrong to Watch Movies on a Weekday Morning
Keiko reveals two traumatic truths, both in the form of questions to Hirayama, that cause us to fundamentally rethink our perceptions, namely (1) do you ever intend on visiting our[…]
Nature · New Genres · New Media
Larger Than Life: Postcard from Earth Offers a Happy Vision of the Future as Long as Humans Leave the Planet
You could take encouragement in the fact Aronofsky is making movies with hopeful messages like PFE instead of films that end with newborn babies being eaten, but you might just[…]
Crime · Franchises & Series · Horror
Hidden Horrors: Jeepers Creepers
Perhaps for some, knowing the real-life context heightens the film’s effect. Or it irreparably takes the viewer out of the experience. In either case, the Creeper is, in fact, a[…]
Drama · Exile and Displacement · Neorealism · Refugees
Borders Without Doctors: Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border
Green Border soars and stumbles because it overreaches in its gravitas and humanity, lingering a little too long and stretching a moment out of shape like all great neorealist films[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Film Technology & History · Interviews
Shapes Through Time and Space: An Interview with Ken Jacobs About His Abstract 3D Film 3X3D
3D is used to record visual reality, but that’s where I take off to the unimaginable. We are (wonderfully) constrained by our particular physiognomy and I wouldn’t change a thing,[…]
Celebrity Culture · Comedy · Hollywood · Road Movies
Turn Back? The Road to Ishtar
Road to Morocco made the National Film Registry by going to the Mojave Desert in California and using rear screen projection. It didn’t need to go to a “real” casbah.[…]
Crime · Drama · Sex & Relationships · SF & Fantasy
Presence Tension: The Scary of 61st
This leaves the provocateur director herself in her role as catalyst for the mayhem to follow as the ultimate filmic presence wreaking its influence on others. Assigned only the title[…]
Directors · Drama · DVD & Blu-ray · Westerns
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: Revisiting Sam Peckinpah’s Unrealized Western on Criterion
Action scenes are what a summer audience wants, but in Pat Garrett the shootouts become episodic and lack the ratcheting up of tension, followed by its release at the climactic[…]
Drama · French Cinema · Uncategorized · Writers & Critics
Bresson, Schrader, and the Fool: Transcendental and Materialist Interpretations in the Films of Robert Bresson
I think the reason Bresson’s films resist singular interpretations is that they are composed of multiple, overlapping perspectives. His films contain elements of humanism, nihilism, absurdism, existentialism, transcendentalism, and numerous[…]
Iranian Cinema · Women in Film
Revolutionary Women in Two Iranian Films: On The Hidden Half (2001) and The House Is Black (1963)
Fereshteh: Sometimes I want to put on make-up, or wear beautiful dresses, or fall in love. I don’t know why, but I feel like I’m living in a small can,[…]
Books · Directors · Women in Film · Writers & Critics
Book Review: Carrie Courogen, Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius
Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius. St. Martin’s Press, 2024, 400pp., $30.00. * * * Published on the heels of Mark Harris’s[…]
Crime · Noir · Photo Essays
Barflies and Hot Lies: The Fifties B-Girl and Fritz Lang’s Subversive Politics in The Big Heat
Debby refuses to be a passive victim of Vince Stone’s violence, fighting back and branding his face with boiling coffee as revenge. But while she’s no helpless victim, Lang’s ending[…]
Crime · Drama · Neo-Noir · Women in Film
“Oh, look”: From Male-Wary Gaze to Objectifying Female Gaze in Gone Girl
“Oh, look. He’s being a good guy, so everybody can see him being a good guy.” – Officer James Gilpin observing Nick Dunne in Gone Girl (2014) There are many[…]
To Live and Die in LA (1985) and the Thrill-Seeking Wasteland of Reagan’s America
However, while other filmmakers got caught up in the heady, cocaine rush of the 1980s, Friedkin was harder to convince. When we dig a little deeper into his Los Angeles,[…]
Drama · Politics · Thrillers & Action
The Imperial Presidency after Trump v. United States: On the 30th Anniversary of Clear and Present Danger
On its 30th anniversary, it also feels remarkably relevant in the wake of the recent Supreme Court ruling that presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for exercising “core” executive[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Exploitation & Erotica · Franchises & Series · Horror · Indies · Women in Film
Spectacles of Property and Perversion: Todd Jason Cook and the Lisa’s Nightmares Series
Just as his characters presume safety and security in their home space, so too does his audience approach each title with a sense of comfort through repeat exposures. The unseating[…]
Activist & Political · Class System · Crime · Essays · Franchises & Series · Myth and Archetype · Outsiders · Politics · SF & Fantasy · Societal Trends · Superheroes
Don’t Be Weird: Heroes, Villains, and the Reinforcement of Class Distinctions in Modern Blockbusters
If you want to make a popular blockbuster, it better be about the right kind of person – and the right kind of person isn’t a loser. A decade ago,[…]
Comedy · Drama · Interviews · Picaresque · Producers & Studios
The Sweet East’s Online Odyssey: In Conversation with Palme d’Or-Winning Producer Alex Coco
A conversation with Palme d’Or-winning producer Alex Coco * * * In Sean Price William’s The Sweet East, we are told “Everything Will Happen,” which may be a warning to[…]
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