Books: The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood
Sam Wasson, The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood (New York: Flatiron Books, 2020). * * * Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye tells the irresistible tale of[…]
I’m Thinking of Ending Things and Men Writing Women
I’m Thinking of Ending Things is, like so many stories, a story about a man masquerading as a story about a woman. Which ultimately makes me wonder why we need[…]
Books · Directors · Documentaries · Experimental & Underground · Women in Film
Her Incantatory Voice: Barbara Rubin and Christmas on Earth
From the same desert, toward the same dark sky, my tired eyes open on the silver star, forever; but the Three Wise Men never stir, the Kings of life, the[…]
Experimental & Underground · Horror · Memoir
Strangest Damn Things: Eraserhead in My Head
Our Eraserhead screening was naïve and unexpected and for me had lasting impact, because when art enters our heads uninvited, leaves traces after it’s flashed through our consciousness, jars the[…]
Troubling Mastery: Scorsese’s and Kubrick’s Psychosexual New York Odysseys
About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position. – W. H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux-Arts” (1940) “It’s also a film I cherish[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · Memoir
Adagio: Phil Solomon on His Life as an Artist
“I’ve always been interested in the idea of cinema and loss, the beautiful and poignant conjuring of human presence and its absence. It’s an illusion, we know that, and yet[…]
Born on a Meat Hook: On André Øvredal’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
“We grow up, but do we ever forget how afraid of ourselves we are?” * * * The books parents protest about are the best at converting children into bookworms.[…]
Drama · Eastern European · Festivals & Awards · Russia
The Soviet Past Spoils Romanian Documentary Cinema: Adrian Pîrvu’s Everything Will Not Be Fine and Leontina Vatamanu’s Siberia in the Bones
There would be nothing wrong with taking sides in such a heated ideological debate if any of the five films screened this year in the prestigious Romanian Days section of[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Cinematographers · Interviews · War
The Greater Symphony: Talking with Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel about Da 5 Bloods
When I take on a project, one of the first things I try to do is get an idea of the overarching tone the director is looking for. Then I[…]
New Genres · New Media · Travel
From Bergen to Oslo and Beyond: All Aboard the Slow TV Train
Yet if Slow TV is concerned with capturing movement, which is actually quite fast during the journey, why then is it also slow? The slowness is in the pace and[…]
Doing Favors: The Insular Moral and Political World of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman
The restrained tone, middle American location, and half-century historical sweep of The Irishman depart from Scorsese’s gangland epics Goodfellas and Casino. It isn’t a political treatise, but it does tie[…]
The Big Sigh: Exploring the Lost Continent of Classic French Film Noir 1932-1966
Expanding and redrawing Ginette Vincendeau’s incomplete map of French film noir * * * Let it be said here first: I come to praise Ginette Vincendeau,1 not to bury her.[…]
Celebrating National Pet Memorial Day (Sept. 13): Good Dog/Bad Dog: The Horror of Disney’s Old Yeller
Today, September 13 (the second Sunday of September), is National Pet Memorial Day, and we can’t think of a single cinematic pet more deserving of memorializing than that ill-fated, long-suffering[…]
“Who is the third who walks always beside you?” Carol Reed, Graham Greene, and The Third Man
If Harry, viewed through the lens of Greene’s perverse Catholicism, is some kind of dark Jesus, then Holly is his betraying Judas, and Anna is his Magdalene. Both Harry and[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · LGBT & Queer
Seeing Double: Two New Films by Jayro Bustamante – Temblores and La Llorona
Despite their focus on timely sociopolitical matters, the films are almost never didactic (the final act of Temblores is an exception), because Bustamante is too keen to explore and shed[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Drama
“Don’t talk to us about being killed”: Uptight and the Problem of Black Cinema in Hollywood
Like Dassin’s 1950 noir classic Night and the City, Uptight is shot predominantly at night, with oddly titled camera angles and bright, glaring colours, ironically organised around the shades of[…]
SF & Fantasy · Women in Film · Writers & Critics
A World Like This Deserves Contempt: Adapting Harlan Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog
A Boy and His Dog’s promotional advertisements also reveal how the novella was adapted and modified to suit the tastes of the American popular film-going public. The movie’s promo posters[…]
Drama · Horror · Women in Film
The Birds Is Us: Where Did We Come From?
The movie is, literally, a projection of our mental landscape. We passively sit back (like Jeffries in Rear Window) and the world appears as we live and make it. We[…]
Documentaries · Historical & Epic · War
Sacrifice in the Name of Documentary: Apollo 11 and For Sama
The pair have little in common, but each goes against the grain of how this form is typically used, sacrificing everything else in the pursuit of an important story that[…]
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